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Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Liam Proven" journal:[<< Previous 10 entries]
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11:16 pm
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Best. Public. Health. Announcement. EVER..
Transcribed for the benefit of our less visual readers. Now with added punctuation, 'cause that's how I roll, bitches.
Warning. Sweary. Extremely.
(Hat-tips to Ickle_Tayto, Ben Goldacre & PaulMSouthworth on Twitter.)
( Read more... )
Tags: alternative medicine, complementary medicine, health warning, homeopathy, vaccination
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04:07 pm
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Advice to Young Men from an Old Man
1. Don't pick on the weak. It's immoral. Don't antagonize the strong without cause, it's stupid.
2. Don't hate women. It's a waste of time.
3. Invest in yourself. Material things come to those that have self-actualized.
4. Get in a fistfight, even if you are going to lose.
5. As a former Marine, take it from me. Don't join the military, unless you want to risk getting your balls blown off to secure other people's economic or political interests.
6. If something has a direct benefit to an individual or a class of people, and a theoretical, abstract, or amorphous benefit to everybody else, realize that the proponent's intentions are to benefit the former, not the latter, no matter what bullshit they try to feed you.
7. Don't be a Republican. They are self-dealing crooks with no sense of honor or patriotism to their fellow citizens. If you must be a Republican, don't be a 'conservative.' They are whining, bitching, complaining, simple-minded self-righteous idiots who think they're perpetual victims. Listen to talk radio for a while, you'll see what I mean.
8. Don't take proffered advice without a critical analysis. 90% of all advice is intended to benefit the proponent, not the recipient. Actually, the number is probably closer to 97%, but I don't want to come off as cynical.
9. You'll spend your entire life listening to people tell you how much you owe them. You don't owe the vast majority of people shit.
10. Don't undermine your fellow young men. Mentor the young men that come after you. Society recognizes that you have the potential to be the most powerful force in society. It scares them. Society does not find young men sympathetic. They are afraid of you, both individually and collectively. Law enforcement's primary purpose is to suppress you.
11. As a young man, you're on your own. Society divides and conquers. Unlike women who have advocates looking out for them (NOW, Women's Study Departments, government, non-profit organizations, political advocacy groups) almost no one is looking out for you.
12. Young men provide the genius and muscle by which our society thrives. Look at the Silicon Valley. By in large, it was not old men or women that created the revolution we live. Realize that society steals your contributions, secures it with our intellectual property laws, and then takes credit and the rewards where none is due.
13. Know that few people have your best interests at heart. Your mother does. Your father probably does (if he stuck around). Your siblings are on your side. Everybody else worries about themselves.
14. Don't be afraid to tell people to 'fuck off' when need be. It is an important skill to acquire. As they say, speak your piece, even if your voice shakes.
15. Acquire empathy, good interpersonal skills, and confidence. Learn to read body language and non-verbal communication. Don't just concentrate on your vocational or technical skills, or you'll find your wife fucking somebody else.
16. Keep fit.
17. Don't speak ill of your wife/girlfriend. Back her up against the world, even if she's wrong. She should know that you have her back. When she needs your help, give it. She should know that you'll take her part.
18. Don't cheat on your wife/girlfriend. If you must cheat, don't humiliate her. Don't risk having your transgressions come back to her or her friends. Don't do it where you live. Don't do it with people in your social circle. Don't shit in your own back yard.
19. If your girlfriend doesn't make you feel good about yourself and bring joy to your life, fire her. That's what girlfriends are for.
20. Don't bother with 'emotional affairs.' They are just a vehicle for women to flirt and have someone make them feel good about themselves. That's the part of a relationship they want. For you it is a lot of work and investment in time. If they are having an emotional affair with you, they're probably fucking someone else.
21. Becoming a woman's friend and confidant is not going to get you into an intimate relationship. If you haven't gotten the girl within a reasonably short period of time, chances are you won't ever get her. She'll end up confiding to you about the sexual adventures she's having with someone else.
22. Have and nurture friendships with women.
23. Realize that love is a numbers game. Guys fall in love easily. You're going to see some girl and feel like you'll die if you don't get her. If she rejects you, move on to the next one. It's her loss.
24. Don't be an Internet troll. Got out and live life. There is not a cadre of beautiful women advertising on Craigslist to have NSA sex with you. Beautiful women don't need to advertise. The websites that advertise with attractive women's photos and claims of loneliness are baloney. All they want is your money and your personal information so that they can market to you. The posts on Craigslist by young 'women' seeking NSA sex, and asking for a picture are just a bunch of gay troll pic collectors. This is especially true if the post uses common gay lexicon like 'hole' as in 'fuck my hole' or seeks 'masculine' men, or uses the word 'cock' (except in the context of 'Don't send a cock shot.') There are women on Craigslist. They are easily recognizable by their 2-5 paragraph postings. Most are in their 30's or older.
25. When you become a man in full, know that people will get in your way. People who are attracted to you will somehow manage to step in your path. Gay guys will give you 'the look.' Old people will somehow stumble in front of you at the worst time. Don't get frustrated. Just step aside and go about your business. Know that these are passive aggressive methods to get you to acknowledge their existence.
26. Don't gay-bash. Don't mentally or physically abuse people because of who they are, or how they present themselves. It's none of your business to try to intimidate people into conformity.
27. If you're gay, admit it to yourself, your parents, your friends and society at large. Be prepared to get harassed. See rule 14. If someone threatens you or assaults you, call the cops. Have them arrested. You have no obligation to self sacrifice because of who you are. As a gay person, you'll have more social freedom than straight men. Use it to protect yourself. Be prepared to get out of Dodge if your orientation makes your life unbearable. Move to San Francisco, New York, Atlanta, or New Orleans. You'll find a welcoming community there.
28. Don't be a poser. Avoid being one of those dudes who puts a surfboard on top of their car, but never surfs, or a dude with a powder coated fixed gear bike and a messenger bag, but was never a messenger. Live the life. Earn your bona fides.
29. Don't believe the crap about the patriarchy. More women are accepted and attend college. More degrees are awarded to women than men. Women outlive men. More men commit suicide. Men are twice as likely to be victims of violence, including murder. If you consider sexual assaults in prisons, twice as many men are raped as women (society thinks prison rape is funny). The streets are littered with homeless men, sprinkled with a few homeless women. Statically, women are happier than men. The myth that girls are being cheated by are educational system is belied by the fact that schools are bastions of femininity, mostly run by and taught by women. Girls outperform boys in school. It is the boys in school getting fucked over, and prescribed Ritalin for being boys. Real wages for men are falling, while real wages for women are rising. Just because someone says something enough times, doesn't make it true. You have nothing to feel guilty about.
30. Remember, 97% of all advice is worthless. Take what you can use, and trash the rest.
vicioustwist
san francisco
02-15-07
Taken from here, copyedited and cleaned-up a bit.
Current Mood:  thoughtful
Tags: blog, repost
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03:09 am
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A whole load of new entries in my Bookmooch inventory
I have just added a ton of books to my inventory on Bookmooch. If you fancy any of them, all you need to do is join, list a few books you're wanting to give away and then you can request them from me!
Yes, I am trying to get more people to join Bookmooch. I think it's an excellent site. Give it a shot!
( The list... )
Current Mood:  sleepy
Current Music: Don Henley - Taking You Home
Tags: ad, list, plug
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11:57 am
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Russia's première social network: Zhivoy Zhurnal, ZheZhe
Interesting news story from the Beeb about the mighty Russian-owned social network, Zhivoy Zhurnal - or ZheZhe for short. In Roman, that would be... "LJ".
LiveJournal: Russia's unlikely internet giantAs Russia prepares to elect a new president this weekend, voters are more fired up than they have been for a decade. It's partly due to an internet revolution that has challenged the state's power to control public opinion - and to the blogging platform LiveJournal.
Tags: blog
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01:55 am
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More eBay pimping: leather jacket, PCI-E graphics card, UltraSCSI HDs
Another bunch of auctions are ending tomorrow or thereabouts...
* XFX GeForce 7800 GTX (256 MB) (PV-T70F-UDF7 V1.2) Graphics Card
* Classic "diamond tassel" black leather biker jacket
And a whole bunch of UltraSCSI 3 hard disks...
* IBM UltraStar 36Z15 18.4GB internal 15,000RPM 3.5" SCSI3 hard disk
* IBM UltraStar 9ES 4.56GB internal 7200RPM 3.5" UltraWide SCSI-3 hard disk
* Quantum Atlas XC09L011 9.1GB internal UltraSCSI 3 10,000RPM hard drive
* Quantum Atlas XC09L011 9.1GB internal UltraSCSI 3 10,000RPM hard drive (yes, 2 identical ones)
* Compaq 313706-B21 9.1GB internal 7,200RPM 3.5" UltraSCSI Hard Drive
* Compaq 9L6001-036 9.1GB 3.5" 7200RPM internal UltraSCSI hard disk
Free delivery for friends so long as you buy me at least 1 pint/item. Multiple items may cost you a large curry. :¬)
Tags: ebay, pimping, plugging, spam
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09:26 pm
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Would anyone like to bid on my bag of Guide goodies?
"Er ..." said Zarquon, "hello. Er, look, I'm sorry I'm a bit late. I've had the most ghastly time, all sorts of things cropping up at the last moment."
He seemed nervous of the expectant awed hush. He cleared his throat.
"Er, how are we for time?" he said, "have I just got a min-"
And so the Universe auction ended. Anyway, I am selling a bag of Guide-related merchandise that was a prize in the quiz at the launch party of And Another Thing. It's on the dreaded eBay, here. Item 270902162283.
I'd be awfully grateful if anyone would like to bid on it, at all.
So long and sorry for all the spam.
Tags: ad, ebay plugging, pimping, spam
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03:59 pm
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Delanceyplace: Keith Richards first meets Mick Jagger
In today's excerpt - the letter below was written by eighteen-year-old Keith Richards to his Aunt Patty. It came to light in 2009 and had not been read by anyone outside the family prior to the recent release of his autobiography. In it, he describes meeting Mick Jagger in 1961. Almost immediately, they were regularly hanging out and "trying to learn how to do it." They went on to worldwide fame as the founding members of The Rolling Stones:
6 Spielman Rd
Dartford
Kent
Dear Pat,
So sorry not to have written before (I plead insane) in bluebottle voice. Exit right amid deafening applause.
I do hope you're very well.
We have survived yet another glorious English Winter. I wonder which day Summer falls on this year?
Oh but my dear I have been soooo busy since Christmas beside working at school. You know I was keen on Chuck Berry and I thought I was the only fan for miles but one mornin' on Dartford Stn. (that's so I don't have to write a long word like station) I was holding one of Chuck's records when a guy I knew at primary school 7-11 yrs y'know came up to me. He's got every record Chuck Berry ever made and all his mates have too, they are all rhythm and blues fans, real R&B I mean (not this Dinah Shore, Brook Benton crap) Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, Chuck, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker all the Chicago bluesmen real lowdown stuff, marvelous. Bo Diddley he's another great.
Anyways the guy on the station, he is called Mick Jagger and all the chicks and the boys meet every Saturday morning in the 'Carousel' some juke-joint well one morning in Jan I was walking past and decided to look him up. Everybody's all over me I get invited to about 10 parties. Beside that Mick is the greatest R&B singer this side of the Atlantic and I don't mean maybe. I play guitar (electric) Chuck style we got us a bass player and drummer and rhythm-guitar and we practice 2 or 3 nights a week SWINGIN'.
Of course they're all rolling in money and in massive detached houses, crazy, one's even got a butler. I went round there with Mick (in the car of course Mick's not mine of course) OH BOY ENGLISH IS IMPOSSIBLE.
"Can I get you anything, sir?"
"Vodka and lime, please"
"Certainly, sir"
I really felt like a lord, nearly asked for my coronet when I left.
Everything here is just fine.
I just can't lay off Chuck Berry though, I recently got an LP of his straight from Chess Records Chicago cost me less than an English record.
Of course we've still got the old Lags here y'know Cliff Richard, Adam Faith and 2 new shockers Shane Fenton and Jora Leyton SUCH CRAP YOU HAVE NEVER HEARD. Except for that greaseball Sinatra ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Still I don't get bored anymore. This Saturday I am going to an all night party.
"I looked at my watch
It was four-o-five
Man I didn't know
If I was dead or alive"
Quote Chuck Berry
Reeling and a Rocking
12 galls of Beer Barrel of Cyder, 3 bottle Whiskey Wine. Her ma and pa gone away for the weekend I'll twist myself till I drop (I'm glad to say).
The Saturday after Mick and I are taking 2 girls over to our favourite Rhythm & Blues club over in Ealing, Middlesex.
They got a guy on electric harmonica Cyril Davies fabulous always half drunk unshaven plays like a mad man, marvelous.
Well then I can't think of anything else to bore you with, so I'll sign off goodnight viewers
BIG GRIN
Luff
Keith xxxxx
Who else would write such bloody crap
Author: Keith Richards with James Fox
Title: Keith Richards - Life
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Date: Copyright 2010 by Mindless Records, LLC
Pages: 77-79
http://www.delanceyplace.com/index.php
Tags: delanceyplace, letter, music, quote
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03:55 pm
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The Seven Words You Can't Say on TV - George Carlin
(Nicked from here and copy-edited, because I found the original just painful to read.)
I love words. I thank you for hearing my words.
I want to tell you something about words that I think is important. They're my work, they're my play, they're my passion. Words are all we have, really. We have thoughts but thoughts are fluid - then we assign a word to a thought, and we're stuck with that word for that thought, so be careful with words.
I like to think that the same words that hurt can heal; it is a matter of how you pick them. There are some people that are not into all the words. There are some that would have you not use certain words. There are 400,000 words in the English language and there are seven of them you can't say on television.
What a ratio that is. 399,993 to seven. They must really be bad. They'd have to be outrageous to be separated from a group that large. All of you over here, you seven, Bad Words. That's what they told us they were, remember?
"That's a bad word!" No bad words: bad thoughts, bad intentions, and words. You know the seven, don't you, that you can't say on television?
( Read more... )
Tags: comedy, humour, quote
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04:16 pm
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A few thoughts on science versus the arts versus faith
This is part of an email I wrote to a friend. Some of it is out of context, but there are bits of it I quite liked, so I thought I'd post it.
The friend is an English Literature graduate who has a very vague interest in science, but regards it as an amusing game and delights in stories that appear to poke holes in it, such as the faster-than-light neutrinos one. I sent him a couple of links I thought would possibly interest him - first, the Bad Astronomy blog's take on the FTL-neutrino result and then Jean Baptiste Queru's lovely little piece on the complexity of modern computing.
Read the second one first.
It's totally irrelevant, but it explains why such subjects are really hard and difficult to explain without a very VERY large amount of background knowledge.
To the point that in the modern world, there is almost no single thing that can be understood in a single lifetime. Collectively, we know so much about the world that no one human mind and brain can hold everything there is to know about, say, a grain of sand.
But if you have a little bit of the right kind of education, you know where to start, where to get a toe in a crack, and you can climb up the rock-face.
The snag is that if you don't have that specific special kind of education - if you have, say, a liberal-arts education - then you don't have that first tiny opening to put a toe into. And without that, there is no way up the wall at all. The only way is to walk away and spend several whole years doing nothing but solidly reading to educate yourself, and then you have the tiny crack and can start to climb. Several years of work to begin a climb that will take the rest of your life.
And I think that is tragic. That is why I think that pure arts education is, ultimately, a waste of time and effort. It doesn't equip you to understand the real world. It just shows you pretty pictures.
The best arts education, one that results from decades of work and a professorship or two, generally gives someone an excellent and unsurpassed understanding of the view of the other people standing on the ground. Some of them are very beautiful. It's a very nice view. It tells you what the other people standing on the ground think. It's not the real world, it's just an artificial, created thing which is not one millionth of a millionth of the mind-shattering real world.
A good understanding of the arts is something lovely and arguably well worth having, but it is to stand in a single small room admiring a handful of paintings on the walls and never to look out of the window and realise that you are in an airship, sailing along over the most astoundingly beautiful landscapes, over seas and mountains and forests and lakes and mighty cities filled with museums and universities and films and concerts - over all the knowledge and the beauty that the whole universe contains.
You seem to think that between us we could, as some sort of Socratic dialogue, write a book that would explain all of science to an arts graduate. Not so. One book, even one a thousand pages long, could not begin to provide a needle to scratch the surface of the rock-face.
You need to spend about a decade of your youth studying science to even be able to see the crack to put your toe into to start to climb the rock-face.
I gave up formally studying science nearly 25y ago. I am such a short distance up the rockface that my waist or knees are still level with your head, and I will probably never get any higher.
But from up here, I can see a view crammed with wonders and marvels that you and every other arts graduate, sitting or standing on the ground, cannot even begin to imagine. If I try to tell you, you will simply not believe me, it is so vast, so amazing, so wonderful, so beautiful.
The shortest, clearest description of a tiny part of it that I have ever seen was Carl Sagan's Cosmos TV series. It is dated but it is wonderful, as in, filled with wonders and it will fill you with wonders. But it will take you some 13 hours to watch it, and that is like peering through a pinhole for an instant at the most beautiful sight that anyone could ever see - it is an eyeblink.
It's like the Venerable Bede's famous quote:
"O King, the present life of men on earth is like the flight of a single sparrow through the hall where, in winter, you sit with your captains and ministers. Entering at one door and leaving by another, while it is inside it is untouched by the wintry storm; but this brief interval of calm is over in a moment, and it returns to the winter whence it came, vanishing from your sight."
You can watch it for free here, in lo-res Youtube glory:
Episode 1 - The Shores Of The Cosmic Ocean
Episode 2 - One Voice In The Cosmic Fugue
Episode 3 - The Harmony Of The Worlds
Episode 4 - Heaven & Hell
Episode 5 - Blues for a Red Planet
Episode 6 - Traveller's Tales
Episode 7 - The Backbone of the Night
Episode 8 - Journeys in Space & Time
Episode 9 - The Lives of the Stars
Episode 10 - The Edge of Forever
Episode 11 - The Persistence of Memory
Episode 12 - Encyclopædia Galactica
Episode 13 - Who Speaks for Earth?
I wonder if you could even spare the time - one hour of each workday evening for two weeks - to watch Cosmos right through?
The sum total of the demonstrable truths of what we can tell about the world is called "science". It isn't a thing, it's not a worldview or a state of mind or a process. It's just a very big list of facts, carefully worked out and tested.
But our modern educational system says that all this is just an alternative and that it's perfectly OK to sail through secondary school and university, choosing to completely ignore the whole thing and just learn about, say, one type of music or one type of poetry.
This is an injustice, a mistake, so vast that I can't find the words to describe it.
It is one that you can undo, but to do so will require dedicating a significant portion of the rest of your life to it.
It is not something one can acquire from a few chats in the pub and writing them down.
Meanwhile, back to the one-room art gallery in the airship for a moment.
The religious mindset is to say that the paintings in the room are the whole world and that you must completely ignore the view out of the window, that everything else you can see is all lies. It is, ultimately, nothing more than hate and fear of the truth. The different religions can't even agree on a set of paintings, but all agree that the truth is to be ignored and denied. They say that what is most important is not observation, but the magic property of belief in the images in the paintings.
I do not care how beautiful the paintings are. I do not care if the paintings offer the greatest source of reassurance against fear, that they tell one that one's life has meaning and matters and is important when one needs that feeling of safety more than ever.
No. What matters is that they deny the truth. They tell their faithful not to believe in experience, in reality, but in myths that cannot be shown to be real. They say that seeking to show them as real or not is evil, and extended all the way to the ultimate, they teach, without exception, that to test the truth is wrong and evil and that you must accept the stories instead.
To deny the view from the window, to tell people not even to look, is a hateful, wretched and evil thing, and this is why I have no respect for any faith, individual or institutionally collective.
It is a destroyer of minds and lives. I hate it and I would like to see it extirpated from the world. The real world is infinitely more beautiful and majestic and moving than any of the lies of any religion, so vastly greater than the miserable myths of ancient primitives that those "prophets" could not even begin to conceive of the greater truths they were denying. It doesn't matter if they thought they were gaining power and prestige or if they really thought they were saving some alleged magical parts of the people they ordered around.
The truth will make you free, and the only way to tell if something is true is to test it. Don't take people's word for it. Ask for the evidence. If it's real, they will happily oblige. If they don't - if they say, no, read this book, listen to this man's words, THIS is the REAL truth, this is all you need - then they are fakers and liars. It's really simple.
Current Music: Vangelis
Tags: blog, email, philosophy, writing
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09:24 pm
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Last-minute eBay pimping
Forgot to do this earlier. These all end tomorrow.
* Acer Aspire 3682WXCi 14.1" 1.6 GHz Laptop PC for spares... - currently £8.50
* Nokia Mini Speakers MD-8 - currently going for a penny
* Archos Jukebox Multimedia - currently 6p.
Tell all your friend.
Tags: ad, plug, spam
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