Real Comparison

Babe Ruth, in 1927, in 151 games, hit 60 home runs. 714 lifetime.
Barry Bonds, in 2001, in 153 games, hit 73 home runs. 762 lifetime. Beating The Bambino's long held records.
Or did he?
How can we compare like achievements without like comparison?

Let's look at the Babe for a moment. He lived a 'reckless' lifestyle, no monk-like training here. He drank often and too much. Smoked cigars. Ate way too much. Had sex with multiple women, stayed out late in spite of team curfews. Drove his car way too fast and crashed many times. Not exactly a dedicated training regimen. In spite of this, he is often celebrated as the greatest baseball player who ever lived. He also often visited sick children in hospitals and even dedicated a home run to one, before that famous game!

One would think with modern training methods and equipment, seventy years later, someone would break the Sultan of Swat's record anyway. Yet players like Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds et al, had to use strength enhancing drugs to attain their exalted status.
What if we changed each players life style to mimic the other? Thereby sort of equalizing them.

Without even a push, we see Ruth as a robust man. Able to smack a baseball over center field any day any game with an old heavy, solid ash Louisville Slugger. So without a smoking, drinking carousing lifestyle, and a little attention to his health through better nutrition and paying attention to his game, and with modern equipment, what could we prorate his home run hitting to? Can we add at least 10 more homers while being realistic? Yes.
So the score is Ruth 70 - Bonds 73.

And now can we take away something from Barry Bonds? Perhaps that needle in his rear every so often and think what that might mean. He hit 16 homers his first year, and looking at his rookie photo, you can see he is a lithe and strong athlete. Can we expect he would average 25 homers a season for his career? Yet if we gave him cigarettes and booze and an unhealthy lifestyle? Maybe even made him eat those ballpark hotdogs? Would it change that greatest year for Bonds to being only a 50 hitter? I have doubled Bonds allowance, while just adding ten to Ruth's. (Hank Aaron topped at 44 in three different seasons, and he never had a suspicion of cheating)

So the score is now Ruth 70 - Bonds 50.

Yes okay, the record is in the books, Bonds blew away Ruth by 13 runs in that one season.
But would Ruth have been the Gretsky of baseball if we transported him into year 2001? And gave him dedication, good health and made him squeaky clean? Might he have put that season record out of reach like Gretsky did? Not 50 goals in 50 games, but 50 goals in 39 games and a total 92 for a season. Might the Bambino have got a hundred homers? His record works out to a home run every two and a half games in 1927. Could we realistically expect a blast over the fence every ONE and a half games in a 151 game season in 2001? Yes.
That's the 100 folks.

So now my score is The Babe 100 - Barry Bonds 50.

By the way, at 25 a season average with one 50, that's still only 600 homers lifetime for Bonds.

Jack Clark, a former St, Louis Cardinals slugger and four-time All-Star said recently, "A lot of them should be banned from baseball, including Mark McGwire." Clark was referencing McGwire's return to baseball for the 2010 season. "All those guys are cheaters — A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez). Fake, phony. Rafael Palmeiro. Fake, a phony. (Roger) Clemens, (Barry) Bonds. (Sammy) Sosa. Fakes. Phonies. They don't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. They should all be in the Hall of Shame." Some call it creepy baseball.

Bonds - 18 million dollars a season.
Ruth made 80 thousand in 1930 - lifetime 785 thousand. Ruth died at 53 with his own self respect and the integrity of being what he was. Nothing hidden.
And it's is all about respect and integrity, isn't it.

Was it a real comparison?
The age of respect is gone from baseball, but we can still hang on to those days that were.
Can't we?

Believe what you will .... but ....

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. . . if you do nothing this year, you owe it to yourself, to at least watch this video sometime . . . .


. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3719259008768610598#


. Even if it is hard to imagine the consequences of believing.

. Even if you believe in the law and order of society.

. Even if you cannot face the ideas presented here.

. Even if you believe in morality.

. Even if you believe in God.

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. . . . especially if you believe in God.

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Arab Justice

YouTube doesn't count in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.
Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan was acquitted of charges of the beating and torture of an Afghan grain dealer, even though it was all recorded on a three hour videotape shot in 2004 in the desert outside Abu Dhabi, one of the United Arab Emirates in the Persian Gulf region.

During the taping the man was shown to be injured by Issa and a security guard; they stuffed sand in his mouth, he was beaten with a nailed board, burned in the genitals with a cigarette lighter, shocked with a cattle prod and led to believe he would be shot. Salt was poured into his wounds and an SUV was repeatedly driven over him.

Sheikh Issa's defence lawyer said 'We deny the incident as it was shown on that videotape,' and added that Issa had been given drugs which caused him to be 'deprived from his poise,' and that the whole scene was a plot by the wimpering Afghan to extort Sheikh Issa.

Oh, did I mention? Sheikh Issa is a member of the emirates' ruling family.

Evidently Sharia Law only applies to others and women.
The tape caused outrage among human rights groups in the United States, where senior U.S. officials familiar with the case said it delayed the ratification of a civil nuclear deal between the UAE and the United States.
But the ratification still went ahead. Deals being way more important than people, of course.
Sort of like that deal in 1990 where the Sheikh of Kuwait promised democracy and equality for women in that state if the US would help him by attacking Saddam Hussein.
Look what that got the US into! And has anyone checked the democratic rule in Kuwait lately?
And remember that British couple that faced years in jail for having sex at night on the beach in Dubai? They got away with a minor sentence then were fined and deported but were told when in Dubai, do as we do. No lusty Romans allowed here.

Be careful of deals with arabs, even if you have video recording.
Now where do I go to get to stone a woman?

Politically Correct Security

So we have a big furor at airports right now about the new full body scanning machines about to be installed. Many people are accepting them but just as many are against the idea.
I am not sure about them yet, except to say that apparently you must stand inside this full body imaging device scanner for a full minute. They are saying that any radiation you get is harmless. Hmmm. Didn't Phillip Morris tobacco corporation once tell us that about their product?
AND, now they say these scanning devices cannot see into body cavities.
Of course drug smugglers have been doing this for years - Women can insert more than a tampon into their vaginas and men, gay or not, can hide plenty of drugs or whatever in their rears. Not to mention that a common smuggling technique is to load the drugs into a condom, swallow the latex and poop it out later. What's to stop a bomber from going into the aircraft washroom and doing the same? Then combining the chemical elements to implement a mid air explosion?
The reaction so far from people seems just silly.
One person said, the people who scan you will be able to see my naked body, and they will be snickering. What? Pride and a haughty spirit goeth before a fall out of the sky? Another says he doesn't want a 10 dollar an hour person perving over seeing his wife. (Some might say at $10 an hour a guy needs SOME perks!) Invasive they all say. Intrusive. Insensitive.
And we ALL need to get scanned by these $250,000.00 machines because we mustn't offend that nervous, sweating guy with the black beard and wild eyes who doesn't speak English and has a bulky bum!
Of course al Qaida is politically correct too because they bomb everybody who is within range!

But instead of being scanned, we will be given the choice of the 'pat down' by a security officer. Lots of turmoil about that as well. This goes back to my $10 an hour comment too. One man PREcomplained, what if the guy doing the pat down is gay? Or a lesbian touching my wife! OMG what if the wife smiles? Another said, as long as the hand search is done appropriately.
What IS appropriate?
You can pat me down but don't feel anything intimate. Didn't the last guy have a cloth tube of explosive sewn into the inside crotch of his underwear? What's that, Sir? It's my penis, Officer. Okay then. Sure.
And none of this takes into account that a suicide bomber doesn't have to hold the explosives ON his body. The assumption still in effect is that you don't put luggage on a plane and then not get into that plane. Like what happened years ago. Airline staff are fine tuned to watch for that today.
But this guy is a suicide bomber, he's going to his 72 virgins anyway. How well is baggage scanned today? Watch the process as you check in, your luggage goes onto a speeding belt, and by the time you are walking to the plane it is being loaded into the soft, underbelly of the aircraft already! The terrorist just needs to poop out the trigger mechanism.
Or better still and altitude bomb. You know how that works, don't you? The chemicals are set into a piece of your your luggage, when the plane rises through an altitude of say, 10,000 feet, a trigger is set. The plane cruises to it's destination at about 30,000 feet. Then when the aircraft descends below 10,000 feet it will now set off the explosion.

Mind you, all this new concern neglects to mention that the 9/11 bombers and our latest Nigerian had VISAs to enter America. The prerequisite form of security of course, is to be aware way ahead of the boarding date of potential threats; who those passengers are, and what is their history and intent. But as President Obama said, the effort by the CIA was not acceptable.
The passenger on a watch list was not investigated properly, information coordinated or implemented properly. Even as far as to say the CIA was negligent.

So now we have a huge event coming up in Vancouver, Canada, the Olympic Games. And a security cost that started out as about 200 million dollars now seems destined for over a billion. Dollars.
And Canadians, as we all know are polite and easy to get along with, and are also politically correct. Sometimes they don't even sing Oh Canada for fear of offending someone within earshot in Greenland. And they are training their security people right now. Nice Canadians are being instructed to never touch a man's turban. And never EVER scan a man's wooden leg! Really? They said that? Yes really! No mention what to do if a person shows up in a full burqa. Person I said because who knows who is really under there?
And here's the rub - if people in an event line get impatient or irritable, security is instructed to let them through without any checking. Nice Canadians don't want anyone mad at them.
I was anxious when I heard that a foreign security might be working in Canada for these games, but I think I'd just as soon have the American Army checking me into the events.

So who wins?
Al Qaida seems to be ahead so far. The Western world is being hamstrung in spite of it's wonderful billion dollar space technology at the cost of a few brainwashed dupes, a few gallons of chemicals or some plastic explosive.

It seems the only safe way to fly in our future will be on a charter flight with a Krazy-glued nudist club.

New World Order

This phrase is gradually getting known.
And beginning to be accepted as something out there that might be happening.
Some attribute the first signs of this to the Bilderberg Group, after a meeting of world leaders and powerful people who met in 1954 in a Netherlands hotel. These secretive but important people are said to have discussed the future of the world and what was needed to sustain our precious blue planet. This sounds like a noble cause actually, because if humanity keeps going unchecked with our waste and carefree attitude, something will break down, if it hasn't started already.
Since that first meeting, many carefully chosen others have attended more of these esoteric meetings around the world. Often world leaders and heads of state. The rich and powerful. Influential magnates and those well connected to the channels of power.

Speculation has become rampant, as happens when you tell little of what you are up to. One of these ideas is that it has been decided, that, although we have six billion people clinging here right now, the optimal population of Earth should be about 500 million. Quite a disparity.
So if that idea has been put forward, then one only has to try to understand how this population decrease could be accomplished.
Ah, there it is then.
If you accept that there are some people over the years who actually could implement such a grandiose plan and might actually be starting on it, other notions begin to purcolate to the surface of the human thinking mind. And as conjecture about something so covert breeds conspiracy theories like nothing else .... one begins to wonder HOW could this be done?

One would need War. Excellent for quick and easy destruction of life. Nuclear tactical weapons have already been approved by America and Britain. Those same weapons already threatened by rogue states.
Disease, many already believe AIDS as a CIA plot to depopulate Africa. Now we have H1N1 going strong, aka Mexican swine flu. Didn't you know that Mexico City is now the most populous city on Earth? Some even distrust the vaccinations!
Chemicals sprayed into our atmosphere (so called chemtrails) with a mixture of mind altering spores to deimmunize and change our personalities to accept a way of life as someone else envisions it?
Genetic engineering? It is possible now to do genetic manipulation to have a cause and effect on certain groups of humans, say, Negroid people can be affected by something that does not affect a Chinese person, etc. And all those ramifications. One could selectively engineer a future population.
HAARP is a military establishment up in the mountains of Alaska. A High Altitude Array Radar Project installation that is studying things like over-the-horizon radar and the ionosphere. However there are suspicions that the ability to boil clouds, change weather and influence human behavior might be part of that stealthy project too. This installation does NOT appear on Google Earth. Hmm?
And the phrase New World Order was brought to the mass attention again in 1990 by George HW Bush in a speech that electrified and sent chills through the conspiracy theorists.

Well this IS mind boggling. isn't it? I'll leave you with that stew for now.
But although maintaining a healthy and minimal population on Earth IS a pure thought, some believe that the purity has become prurient. A siren of sex to those in power. The viagra of their being might now have become another swollen conception manifesting into their elite consciousness. What if .... ( a harsh whisper) ... New World Order became ....
- One World Government -
Yes, a hushed phrase that can fill glimmering eyes with a power induced glaze. An idea that immediately creates Kings, Princes, Emperors and .... um, what else?
.......... Slaves.
And the conspiracy mongers run with it. A noble idea run amok.
Are we heading that way? Destined? Is this the beginning or the end game?
Pay attention to world events with these thoughts in your mind and suddenly the rationale of the happenings becomes more centered. More real. Things make sense. Do research for yourself. Ask questions or at least don't accept answers. Where is the truth? Pay attention.
Movies make stuff like this happen on screen as fiction, which makes it all the harder to envision in the mind as reality.
Pay attention.

Blackwater wins again

You'd almost think that the Blackwater corporation, now known as Xe, the company that has a controversial private army in Iraq, is being protected by someone.
Remember every single TV cop show you ever watched when they apprehend the bad guy, and they say this? - "Anything you say may be taken down and used against you in a court of law ..."
Evidently that's exactly why a federal judge dismissed manslaughter charges against five Blackwater security guards in the 2007 deaths of Iraqi civilians in a Baghdad square, finding that prosecutors wrongly used the mens' own statements against them.
Huh?
After the firefight, the Blackwater guards were questioned by government investigators about the incident. And it was construed by the federal judge that they might have been in fear of losing their jobs and therefore their statements were not allowed as evidence.
Each of the former guards faced 14 counts of manslaughter, 20 counts of attempted manslaughter and one count of using a firearm in the commission of a violent crime. A sixth guard pled guilty.
Blackwater/Xe is the same company that, during hurricane Katrina, stopped US citizens at gunpoint, from reaching high ground and safety in the turmoil of that tragic situation.
So, do the writers of TV shows now have to say; "Nothing you say will be used against you, we promise."
Or is this recent ruling only for a company that many think of as a rogue organization protected by the State Dept, NSA and the CIA?

Whatever the Braidwood Inquiry findings ....

it still remains that an RCMP officer, when Robert Dziekanski was down after being tasered 5 times, laid his leg across the side of Dziekanski's throat and cut off the blood supply to his brain. THAT is what killed him. That is what they don't want you to think about. Any school child knows that someone will die in seconds by this. He was not dead from the taser, he died from a policeman's full weight across his throat. My opinion and the opinion of many, including Paul Pritchard, the man who actually took the video.
What I would like to know as well, is who was the actually person who INSTRUCTED that security man to go and stand in FRONT of Pritchard's video camera to try to block him gaining evidence. That guy should be charged with something TOO!
All in all an attempted cover up and continued blocking by our RCMP
creating a shame out of an already tragic situation.

Big Brother at work

Installing the electronic watchers that will keep track of Vancouver people.

What's in YOUR wallet?
Do you have an embedded chip in your credit card? A new driver's license with the chip? Gone to a major sporting event and had YOUR face recorded by face recognition software?

Paranoia

This is a five ring circus. No elephants or unicorned horses. No monkeys riding dogs, but a circus just the same. In the main ring is Gordon Campbell with John Furlong as the Ringleader ... er Ringmaster of VANOC.
He has the whip and chair but has no fear of tigers and lions, because the whip is for the people and the chair is for Gordon to sit in and watch as the people are beaten into submission. These two are so afraid of failure or embarrassment that they sneakily pull away your human rights and overrule the constitution of Canada.
The cameras are going up on buildings, the sensors being tuned, the so called integrated Security Unit wearing the traditionally intimidating black suits is visiting dissenters, legitimate journalists are being harrassed and interrogated, and the freedoms that we take for granted are being removed, all in the name of 'The Games'.
Watch over your shoulder, guard your phone messages, find out the keywords, listen to the voices, tread with care, 1984 is a little late, but it is here right n

Call out the Army!

Bud Mercer, head of the RCMP's Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit, has announced the end of free speech as we know it in Canada.
The budding mercenary said there will be 'Free Speech Zones'. There will be no protests, talks, or placards with anti-Olympics messages allowed outside these designated areas. And the army will be here to enforce it. Is this actually inciting protest? Where would these zones be? In the Central Park forest? The dikes along the Fraser River? Perhaps somewhere in the West Kootenays?
Bud Mercer is the same guy who is sending mysterious men in black to harass anyone now who voices concern. And he has 4500 soldiers coming to make sure no one speaks out. They also plan on herding the homeless out of town. Maybe in boxcars? Oh no, wait, that was in Nazi Germany. How did the Chinese do it in Beijing? Oh wait, that was in Communist China.
This perception of a threat by the ISU is curtailing our rights to free expression and free association. There will be thousands of surveillance cameras watching everything you do. Security officials gathering intelligence on potential threats. Oh wait, this is Canada, a shining example of democracy and freedom. Isn't it? It couldn't be all that bad. Could it?
One wonders if these actions by already heavy handed enforcers will result in some sort of backlash and even some interest by regular people as Vancouver descends into a police state.
And one almost assumes this kind of suppression of democracy in Canada will actually encourage the organization of protest groups. That is if the famously placid Canadians even care about their rights and freedoms.
They don't want protests like Seattle had during the WTO meetings. Well many people began learning about the World Trade Organization because of those protests. And many now believe the WTO has no rights to over rule countries, yet it is now happening.
Who knows what VANOC is starting by over ruling Canadians' fundamental rights?
I think this is going to heat up, perhaps at Army gunpoint.

Journalism 2.0

People are talking about Journalism 2.0 lately.
This is partly a theory that journalism as we knew it is now dead. It has to do with the modern media, TV news, newspapers, radio news. These sources for your information seem to be unreliable and untrusted. The news you get from newspapers is now almost 3 days old when it is printed. And they often quote news from TV or even weblogs! TV news hours fill up with anything but real news. Looking for 'stories' to tell within a time frame. Entertainment at 6.
A recent study of news information revealed that most of the younger generation get their hard news from, of all people, Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. Walter Cronkite died and news trust died with him. Journalism 1.0 is no longer supported, like that old Commodore 64 in a land fill somewhere, it is trash.
Most hard news outlets are conglomerates owned by a very few powerful people. A little research will often tell you exactly who owns them, and a little more reading will get you the slant of that owner. A little scrutiny will even tell you HOW the affiliated stations will report news. Do we really need to watch Fox news for their slanted and often doctored views? What is widely viewed to be propaganda! So why do we want to pay attention then? Of course the research this generation is doing is on the World Wide Web.
Aha. That's it isn't it?
The reason people are discussing Journalism 2.0.
News now comes from people posting items on the web; in forums, blogs, Youtube, social networking sites like Facebook. Yes, opinionized it may be and there is a lot of chaff and misinformation, but a keen mind can separate that from DISinformation as practiced by certain organized media. Do we believe the antics of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck masquerading as news commentary? Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert are on the Comedy Network, they go for the laugh, and yet through the humor we discern truth. Salon.com regularly scoops the major news organizations. Wolf Blitzer fumbles through a program trying for seriousness yet seems to be a victim of news technology! CNN ratings have plummeted. Newspapers can no longer take the time to verify their stories in the competition with a Youtube cell phone video of what just happened.
Journalism is freer now that we, the people, can post stories and items and video about what WE saw. Anywhere and anytime in the world! We no longer need the trained reporter who can perhaps write better, or a videographer who gets the better angle and the glistening tear, all edited for a timed segment of the Six O'clock news (entertainment) hour.
The face of journalism has changed and the real eloquence is in the spontaneity of the report, whether it be from a shaky unfocused cell-phone camera or an ungrammatical posting on a blog.
Journalism 2.0 is here and we all have a tremendous new power. We are reporting to each other now.
We need only to expose the truth.

Forum - have your say

Conspiracy theory 3 - Microsoft

posted on the original caterwauls blog, Saturday, February 19, 2005.

Wasn't it a few years ago that the US Government threatened Microsoft under antitrust laws? And didn't that interest disappear suddenly? Then it came back and they threatened to dismantle Microsoft into 3 separate companies? They feared Microsoft had way too much power because of their monopolistic position in the computer market?
Wait, wouldn't a monopoly be a GOOD thing if a government wanted to control its people and identify where they were and what they were saying and doing and thinking and the road was headed to everyone owning a computer? And most likely to have the Windows Operating System? Isn't Windows on 98% of all computers and XP on virtually every one?
When you go to a website, and then delete or clear all your cookies, and then go back to that website some time later, and they know who you are ... er, didn't Microsoft put a unique number into your operating system under the hype that it was a GOOD thing? Then under waves of protest from the public say that they wouldn't TURN ON that unique identifying number? Or at least YOU could turn it off? And doesn't your hard drive have a unique number too?
Didn't the FBI come out with a sneaky computer spy system called 'Carnivore' a few years ago, that could read the contents of any computer it wanted through your server? Then they changed the name because it seemed too ominous and scary and 1984ish? It could see every single email you sent to whoever and every word you typed into your hard drive or internet browser? Including every password you ever used? And didn't all this happen at about the same time as Microsoft introduced Windows 98? And didn't the US hold these server companies hostage by threatening to shut them down unless they installed Carnivore into their systems without telling anyone? Without telling their customers?
Doesn't Homeland Security have the power to do anything they want without telling anyone about what they are doing? To fight terrorism? Hmm.
Isn't Microsoft starting to add things now to updates of its software without making clear to technical people exactly what those updates are or what they do? In Windows Media player some technicians have compared Media Player 9.0 with Media Player 10.0 and can't find any differences? So why the automatic update?
Would the US government and Bill Gates have made a deal to allow Microsoft to continue as one company, so long as the Justice department had access to the Windows Operating System?
I don't know ... would they?

Er ... would the US government be that sneaky? Oops, never mind, I was here in the sixties.