Waterbug

This video cartoon is a howl!

OK, so I LIKE Tom Cruise

It's hard to deny it—the camera loves Tom Cruise! After Oprah spent a day with Tom at his Telluride, Colorado, home, she invited him back to Chicago to celebrate his 25-year career of making audiences laugh, cry and cheer as a leading man in film. (Visit this link to see more. He really is an extraordinary actor.)

Tom's performances have earned him three Best Actor Oscar® nominations for the films Born on the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire and Magnolia.

School shootings and Deadly Drugs

I missed the actual Fox News Broadcast on Sunday, December 6, 2007 at 9 pm, but I was able to pick up the segment on YouTube at http://youtube.com/watch?v=9S-7aNPf33A. There is too much evidence that psychiatric drugs -- poorly researched and loosed on the market by the misinformed -- are causing psychotic breaks and violence. We need to "follow the money". Who wins and who loses? And, ultimately, who loses? We all do. The quality of life is declining. Time to wake up.

So how do you handle depression and the multitude of mental problems that we see being diagnosed? Not with drugs. Correct nutrition would probably help. Ultimately, one needs to know oneself, what life is about, one's place in the scheme of things. In 1967, I stumbled into Scientology, and I have never regretted it. Check it out:  http://scientology.org/

More on Madness

an essay by Russell Soloman

(posted with his permission)

There is an insouciant use of “madness” as spontaneous creativity or intuitive leaping, which makes the ordinary “real life” logic nervous. This “madness” is used as relish, as charm, “You lovely mad person!”

This is because of the low level of awareness in most logic,which is two valued--right and wrong--moral, biblical, absolute.Someone is trying to be the nail in the head, or hit the nail onthe head. He has been decreed to, commanded, he does nothave his own perceptions: he is taking orders.

Someone who doeshave his own universe and his own judgment seems “mad” to him. Thus we have the usual reality battles, which all battles are--over reality. (And probably over misunderstood words.)

The word “madness” is loose and figurative and means all kinds of things because the language has so few words for free beings,not usually being employed in freeing them, or talking about them in a positive way. Thus a free, happy being must be “mad.” And slave-maker psychiatrists will hasten to name a “disorder” for it. And earlier, priests had “witchcraft” and “heresy” and secular boiling in oil aimed against free beings. These days we have child-drugging to prevent freedom of thought and expression.

Enforced reality is a big business. “Mad, crazy, mentally ill” are used to invalidate.“If you don't agree, you must be mad,” is the usual formula for the invalidation of personal realities, especially the higher ones. Then we ironically admire this “madness” and make the word a good quality. But tossed into this is the tinge of evil in much madness,as in certain popular arts, as in racism, so you have people trying to be beautiful by destruction. They are “mad” in the sense of evil purposes showing up in public and causing harm. But they may be charming and may hold high office, may wear beautiful uniforms; however, they can not bring life to fellow man; they can't talk to you or their families, nor even their fellow politicians or comrades in arms.

Madness is easy to see by its result: pollution of the mind, cadavers underfoot, continual deficit borrowing against the future that may not come if killed by the knife of “profit,” raped by actual madness.

“Madness” is being pressed into use to account for conditions “out of range of usual reality.” But there are upper ranges and lower ranges. There is also one's own universe in good condition and in bad condition. There is in “madness” a hint of disapproval; the word is trying to defend an agreed upon social, or moral order. But it also tries to tell of high states of freedom, not approved of by the “legal” owners of reality.

It must account for the ocean of viewpoints and infinity of ideas, for which this word, even if joyously figurative, can not account. What do we call the roll of the eyes when we hear our leader tell us he is making a “surge” by killing more people, and this “surge” will bring order and agreement? How about “mad-eye-roll,” or “folderol”?

In the “madness” can, worms wiggle and begin to seem like life in its infinity of emotional tones and valuable actions; its not so valuable destructions; its fun qualities, and its insane and unlawful grip on the realities of man.

Don't assume that I am promoting “madness” even if I like “madness,”in its upper ranges of joy and creation and insouciance and spirit of play, inspired delight. There is such a thing as the exact truth of something, and that usually is a free, uncoerced view of isness. An isness, no matter how it got there, IS WHAT IS. Ability to make and compute with isnesses without twisting their necks and making them lie and calling them “freedom” when they are murder, etc., is a useful basis for action among fluid realities. So is the ability to communicate and to grant beingness to others. This is all obvious, so I should shut up about it.

Okay, don't get mad, you lovely “mad” person. You are “crazy,” and that is what I like about you. “Crazy,” as in unique, aesthetic, original, joyous,one of a kind, not duplicated in any catalogue of mediocrity, valuablein your deepest god. I pray that I may intimately  be connected by being with you, know you, enjoy you, take “flitter”  baths in your laugh, niggle-higgle in your sparks of thought. (Where  are the words for the potential infinities of co-existence—the ones that do not  decay into “natural law”?)

After exhilaration the language quits, or gets real solemn about god and the Other-Causation that made you, that keeps the lid on your divinity and won't let you “go mad” up here, because you will wreck the universe. And you would, given half the joyous glint and huge free view that this might require. So we keep the lid on original thought and the saying of it. Who wants your truth when I have mine, and let's fight about it and have war parties. Mm, blood and guts, the hors d'oeuvres of despair. Reality as usual. I have enough trouble with this morning without you mucking it up with desperate needs. See how language works better when angry and not as well in the heartbeat of your presence?

For that we need poetry.

For days I have been seeing
the galaxy at noon. The stars
are all there, and the planet
falls among them carrying our
small bodies.

It rained in the night and my
face is washed clean of stars.
I am looking for the time not
here yet where we can talk
under the shady branches of
languages with brain light,
touch light.

You know everything and I want
to feel it running on my brain skin,
taking root in my tapestries and
flowering into white horses, manes
dazzling the white roses' jealous
thorns.

I hold you in a wish for pure time,
slow release of buds to blossoms,
I invent slow springtime, sparks of
water which is thought. A sip of
serene infinities as we speak.
I miss your native life forms.

Put on a grasshopper body and
we will go leaping,
drooling grass
sap from our jaws, kissing light
with our huge eyes.

The Golden Age of Knowledge Basic Books and Tapes

The basic books and accompanying lectures of Scientology have been thoroughly researched and are now available as Ron originally wrote them and with full glossaries to enhance understanding. There are also courses and extension courses so that you can study them in a course room or in your home, sending lessons in to an extension course director.

The books and tapes are available at Bridge Publications or from a local Church of Scientology.

More about evaluation

Recently, I posted my thoughts on evaluation on my pam-phlets blog. Here's some more thoughts.

I was reading the new edition of Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health yesterday and in the forword on How to Read this Book, (p 2 of hardcover) Mr. Hubbard talks about the "underevaluation" of facts because we "knew it all along." He points out that a fact is never important without proper evaluation of it and its precise relationship to other facts.

So I began to think, not only about should we evaluate, but when should we evaluate and the correct evaluation of importance.

Of course, we evaluate all the time. We decide something is important or unimportant. We even decide that something is important but that we can't or won't do something about it, or that, despite its importance, we will do something else.

Sometimes we are actually making decisions that fit our best interests. But often, we are reacting to hidden influences.

Evaluating for yourself (making decisions about what is important or unimportant to you) is one thing, but what about evaluating for others? Well, parents evaluate for their kids. "You should go to school. You should go to bed at 9." In so doing, they establish a structure for the child. Guidance on what is good, important and proper.

But from 1945, a phase started when parents were kind of encouraged NOT to evaluate for their kids. (This was attributed to psychologist Dr. Spock's book and labeled "permissive child-rearing." I'm not sure how many people actually read his book and how many simply formed their ideas based on little data and a lot of evaluation.) A generation grew up under this "permissive" philosophy.

I should say that I'm blogging in an area that I admittedly don't know that much about, having not had children. But I did grow up in this era of permissive child-rearing, so I have some thoughts about it. So what happened? Well, as I see it, it didn't work. Children need guidance, direction -- a moral code.

A child (or adult) without proper guidance, education and a moral code is unpredictable and disruptive. Psychology (talk therapy) failed, and Into this disrupted child-rearing scene stepped the psychiatrists. The psychiatrists are highly suseptible to hidden influences. There is no scientific body of knowledge behind the psychiatrist. Did you know that? They are people trained as doctors, then psychology, and then let loose on the world. They have a manual called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) which contains a list of "mental illnesses" they have "voted in."  Yes, VOTED in.

Wikipedia notes that there is controversy about the DSM because roughly 50% of the authors who previously defined psychiatric disorders have had or have financial relationships with pharmaceutical industries and drug companies. (Also see "Experts Debunk DSM.") In today's psychiatry, if you get diagnosed as mentally ill, you're sure to end up on some psychiatric drug! You may not know that many of the men and women incarcerated in our prisons are on some sort of psychiatric mediation. They get their "daily meds". They may get out of jail, but not free. They are now addicted to some very powerful drugs.

But I digress. On the topic of evaluation, this is an area which is under-evaluated. You may think, well, there is a Science of Mental Health, and the psychiatrists have it all taken care of and we now have these brand new psychiatric drugs which handle these poor mentally ill people.

Take a good look for yourself, my friend. These drugs are often lethal. These "experts" don't know what they're doing, and the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. Who benefits from the current psychiatric and drug scene? Well, the psychiatrist. He now has a "solution" that doesn't take any time at all — write a prescription. And the drug manufacturer, who now has an expanding clientele.

Inform yourself at the Citizens Commission on Human Rights website. Your correct evaluation of this scene is the first step towards a saner world.

Press release for July Art Show at the Reston Community Center by Coulter

Water Forms Art Show by Coulter at RCC in July Arts & Living, by pamcoulter, on 06/28/07 at 07:50 AM

July 2007 at Reston Community Center Lake Anne: A retrospective of over 60 paintings spanning 42 years on the theme “Water Forms” by Pam Coulter opens July 3 at the Reston Community Center, Lake Anne Plaza. The artist will hold a reception on July 8, 2-4 PM. The show will run until August 6. The Community Center is open 10 AM to 10 PM, Tuesday thru Sunday. The artist says: “In this show, the journey starts in Greece, where I spent a year paintings after graduating from Antioch College and teaching art for a year in Florida. Water has always fascinated me because of its ability to change — to reflect, to refract, to obscure, to vanish into sky, reappearing as clouds only to rain or snow down on us.” The show, spanning 42 years, contains images from Greece, the Caribbean, Montana, Herndon, Reston, the Potomac River at Great Falls. Coulter is a 3-time winner of Best in Show at the Art League Gallery at the Torpedo Factory and has won many awards in League of Reston Artists shows. She is currently a member of MAX_21 group in Reston (at ArtWorks Studio) and the Riverbend Plein Air group. She has been published in American Artist magazine (Feb 1995) and included in a book of 20 acrylic painters called the North Light Book of Acrylic Painting Techniques (http://www.amazon.com/North-Light-Acryli....     She has participated in regional juried shows and had a number of one-person shows. Until it closed in 1997, She was represented by Venable-Neslage Galleries in Washington, D.C. In 1998, she had a painting accepted for display in the National Art Club in New York City. She participates regularly in Art League shows at the Torpedo Factory as well as League of Reston Artists shows. More information is available at: http://www.blehert.com/info/biospam.html    She currently teaches Oil and Acrylic Painting on Wednesday Evenings at the Reston Community Center at Lake Anne.

Breathtaking talent on YouTube Video

I'm blogging this because it NEEDS to be shared! It is a breathtaking moving video.

Asthe intro says:
Incredible. A humble quiet phone salesman takes the stage at “Britain’s got Talent” and announces he wants to sing opera. The judges look skeptical to put it mildly. Then he sings.

Translation:

None must sleep! None must sleep!
And you, too, Princess,
in your cold room,
gaze at the stars
which tremble with love
and hope!

But my mystery is locked within me,
no-one shall know my name!
No, no, I shall say it as my mouth
meets yours when the dawn is breaking!

And my kiss will break the silence
which makes you mine!

(No-one shall know his name,
and we, alas, shall die!)

Vanish, o night!
Fade, stars!
At dawn I shall win

One Psychiatrist breaks ranks....

 Dr. Douglass C. Smith, MD, board certified psychiatriest, has broken ranks with psychiatry.  Here's his take on deadly psychiatric drugs. He says they "work" by impairing the brain from properly functioning, dampening feelings, and are harmful. If you've ever wondered how Cho and others could go into a school and start shooting, consider that the reason they are given psych drugs is to stop them from feeling anything -- such as remorse, or compassion, or pangs of conscience.

How YOU Can Make Billions in the Mass Murder Industry

Cho went about it wrong.
He just started shooting,
a crude and unrewarding activity.
Here's what he should have done:
1. Switched from English to medicine.
2. Gotten his degree in psychiatry.
3. Gotten on the American Psychiatric Association (APA) committee
that updates the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual (DSM),
mainly by creating new mental illness
by voice vote.
4. Proposed a new illness: Obsessive
Respiratory Rhythmic Inflation/Deflation Disorder
(ORRIDD) -- that is, breathing, a specialized,
chronic restlessness or tic.
5. Worked with a major pharmaceutical firm
to develop a cure (a lead pellet to be injected
directly into the brain).
6. Helped develop the marketing campaign:
IS YOUR CHEST ALWAYS RISING, FALLING, RISING, FALLING,
ALL DAY, EVERY DAY, EVERY NIGHT, RISING, FALLING, AND
YOU CAN'T STOP IT, CAN'T GET AWAY FROM IT, CAN'T
REMEMBER WHAT IT'S LIKE TO HAVE A MOMENT OF SILENCE,
FREEDOM FROM MOTION, FROM THE RASPING OF AIR
IN YOUR THROAT? YOU MAY BE SUFFERING
FROM A CHEMICAL IMBALANCE IN YOUR BRAIN
AS A RESULT OF LEAD DEFICIENCY (LD). YES!
STUDIES SHOW THAT MORE THAN 50% OF THE PEOPLE
VIEWING THIS COMMERCIAL (IN SPITE OF THEIR VIEWING HABITS)
SUFFER FROM Obsessive Respiratory Rhythmic
Inflation/Deflation Disorder!!!

If YOU are suffering from ORRIDD, tell your doctor
or your local quiet, unsocial person (perhaps
one of our trained students or postal workers)
that you may need a prescription for QUIETUSIN!
Quietusin is made of the finest lead available
and is injected directly into the brain. The results
are instant, a blessed restful state for the first time
in your life -- and it LASTS! Lasts without your needing
a second prescription. NOTHING WILL EVER
BOTHER YOU AGAIN! This is what you've been waiting for!
[sideeffectsincludeinonlyeverycase...ah...deathwhich
isusuallymoderate]
7. Become a well-known proponent of Quietusin,
give talks on it to doctors, write a book about it,
get interviewed on the late shows, in magazines,
author studies on the reliability, the lack of
withdrawal symptoms (the impossibility of withdrawal),
etc.
8. Welcome your patients, point out (if they haven't noticed)
that they are suffering from this obsessive condition.
Get them to notice how much of their time and energy
is expended on this respiratory unease. Make sure
they are properly insured. Give them their "shot"
of Quietusin -- preferably outside the office,
to avoid messes. Collect from the insurance companies.
You can line up hundreds of patients in front
of a freshly dug trench, and use one of the latest
automatic delivery devices to medicate them all
in a second.
9. Find more patients.
10. Since many obvious sufferers from ORRIDD
will be in denial, utilize state laws authorizing
enforced out-patient medication to force them
(your ex-wife's mother, for example)
to receive their doses.
And so on. The possibilities are endless...
almost.