Monetisation

The transition from a society based on gifts
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Through the stages of barter
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Commodity currencies
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Precious metals
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And the present-day financial system
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Has taken thousands of years in some places
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And has been introduced quite suddenly in others.
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It continues to this day:
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More and more of our human abilities, skills, relationships, and culture are becoming the subject of property and therefore of money.
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We are in fact nearing the culmination of a vast historical process:
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The conversion into financial capital of a variety of other forms of wealth that were never before the subject of purchase, sale, and ownership,
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That were never before associated with money
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But were instead held in common, by a community or a society—the commonwealth.
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As they become monetized, the money-associated qualities of anonymity, scarcity, and alienation encroach ever-further on those remaining areas of human beingness where the dynamics of the gift still hold.
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The monetization process is inexorable
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Unstoppable
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Because greed increases until it consumes itself
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Until it breaks down that is
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The increasing power of those who have continues
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The increasing desperation of those who have not grows
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Ergo conflict
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The current situation cannot be sustained without increasing alienation and violence
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And that is what is happening right now

Interest to no one

Just a simple look at interest
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Why?
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Because interest rates lead to scarcity, competition and the necessity of perpetual growth
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This is where we are today enmeshed in the nonsense of a perpetual growth economy
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Since nearly all the money in the economy is being lent out at interest through one mechanism or another, in deposits, loans etc, it follows that either:
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That some of these loans must end up in default or
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That the supply of money must grow
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Because if I am going to pay back a loan with interest, I must obtain that extra amount beyond the principle from somewhere else
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If the money supply is not growing, then a percentage of wealth holders corresponding to the prevailing interest rate must go bankrupt
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In other words if there are one thousand pounds in the world, and they are lent out at ten percent interest to ten people then one must go bankrupt to supply the other nine with the money to pay back their loans after one year.

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That is how interest sets us in competition.
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And this is the basis on which the world's economy is run
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Some must lose so that others win
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This system cannot continue indefinitely
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What comes next is not even under discussion
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We know where the current system leads
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To another financial crisis

Men are just happier

Nicknames
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If Laura, Kate and Sarah go out for lunch, they will call each other Laura, Kate and Sarah.
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If Mike, Dave and John go out, they will affectionately refer to each other as Fat Boy, Godzilla and Four-eyes.
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Eating out
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When the bill arrives, Mike, Dave and John will each throw in $20, even though it's only for $32.50. 
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None of them will have anything smaller and none will actually admit they want change back.
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When the girls get their bill, out come the pocket calculators.
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Money
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A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs.
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A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn't need but it's on sale.
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Bathrooms
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A man has six items in his bathroom: toothbrush and toothpaste, shaving cream, razor, a bar of soap, and a towel .
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The average number of items in the typical woman's bathroom is 337. 
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A man would not be able to identify more than 20 of these items.
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Arguments
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A woman has the last word in any argument.
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Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.
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Future
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A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
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A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.
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Success
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A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.
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A successful woman is one who can find such a man.
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Marriage
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A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't.
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A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change, but she does.
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Dressing up
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A woman will dress up to go shopping, water the plants, empty the trash, answer the phone, read a book, and get the mail.
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A man will dress up for weddings and funerals.
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Natural
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Men wake up as good-looking as they went to bed.
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Women somehow deteriorate during the night.
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Offspring
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Ah, children!. 
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A woman knows all about her children. 
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She knows about dentist appointments and romances, best friends, favourite foods, secret fears and hopes and dreams.
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A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house
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Just joking!

Just so deaf.........

The idea of personal responsibility is alien to many
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It's real though, the only person responsible for what happens to you in your life is you
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Note this
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Whenever there is something wrong in my life
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There is something wrong in me.
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We mirror what surrounds us 
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And what surrounds us mirrors us
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This is a Universal truth.
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We must take responsibility for what is in our life.
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The law of here and now
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Looking backward to examine what was
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Prevents us from being totally in the here and now 
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Old thoughts, old patterns of behaviour, old dreams...
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Prevent us from having new ones.
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The law of change
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History repeats itself until we learn the lessons that we need to change our path.
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Said over and over one day it will resonate
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Sadly we might read things a hundred times
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Be told them a hundred times
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But until we are ready we do not hear
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We do not hear nor understand what is being said
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Life is so short so learn to listen better
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Pay more attention
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If there is something that keeps happening over and over in your life then wake up!
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It is happening over and over because you are blind to your lesson
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Do not blame others
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Do not keep finding excuses
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It is you
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You are the one responsible
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No one else
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Just you
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Try to see what is being shown to you
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Then act to change things
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To move on
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It cannot be funny having the same issue happen over and over again
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It is just amazing how many humans just keep making and accepting the same problems over and over
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Just my bad luck many say
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No it is not there is no luck involved
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Just you refusing to see
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Refusing to listen
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Just so deaf..................

Quotations for you

"We may not have it all together, but together we have it all."
Author Unknown
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Yesterday's the past and tomorrow's the future. 
Today is a gift which is why they call it the present."
Bill Keane
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"The miracle is this; the more we share, the more we have."
Leonard Nimoy
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"Friendship makes prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it."
Cicero, 44 B.C.
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"Seven days without laughter makes one weak."
Mort Walker
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"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olson, 1977 (president of Digital Equipment Corp.)
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"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
Albert Einstein
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"Out of clutter, find simplicity; from discord, find harmony; in the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity."
Albert Einstein
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"There are no such things as strangers, only friends that we have not yet met."
Author Unknown
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"Of all the days, the day on which one has not laughed is the one most surely wasted."
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort, 1741-1794, French writer
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"Hope is like a road in the country. 
There never was a road; but, when many people walk together, the road comes into existence."
From the National Organization for Rare Disorders, Inc.
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"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much."
Helen Keller
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"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echos are truly endless."
Mother Teresa
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"Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible."
John Wooden
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"Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them."
John Updike, 1989, U.S. author & critic
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"One cool judgement is worth a thousand hasty counsels. 
The thing to do is to supply light and not heat."
Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), Speech January 29, 1916 in Pittsburgh
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"Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction."
Antoine de Saint Exupery (1900-1944), French aviator and author
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"Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: 
All of them make me laugh."
W.H. Auden 1907-1977, Anglo-American poet
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"Only great pain is, as the teacher of great suspicion, the ultimate liberator of the spirit...
I doubt whether such pain improves us-but I do know it deepens us."
Friedrich Nietzsche, 1887 (German philosopher, 1844-1900)
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"It is not length of life, but depth of life."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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"Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best."
Henry Van Dyke
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"Do what you can with what you've got wherever you are."
Theodore Roosevelt
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"To dream of the person you wish to be is to waste the person you are."
Author Unknown
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"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try"
Beverly Sills
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"There are only two ways to live your life. 
One is as though nothing is a miracle. 
The other is as though everything is a miracle."
Albert Einstein

Porn

It would actually be better if nobody watched porn.

I think this is irrefutable.

It would be better because everyone knows that porn is rather unpleasant

The best that anyone can come up with in porn's defence are arguments about saturation

Like 'it's everywhere, so it's normal. so it's OK'

And then often a tautology about harmlessness "porn is harmless because it's just a bit of fun ie harmless".

Bullshit

Just start from a point of honesty

It would be better for society if nobody watched porn

How do you defend it?

It's natural to have sexual urges.

It's not natural to watch porn.

By watching porn is meant watching the kind of porn that people are watching and producing nowadays.

Much of which is about the sexual thrill to be had from degrading a woman or treating her as a sexual subordinate.

Most of it is in fact about raping women

Except it's dressed up as a discrete rape, rape with consent.

It's about how much you can make a woman scream, groan, bend, beg, slobber or gag.

Can you tell me how anyone who watches this kind of porn can turn around and say it's natural or healthy

Or just a bit of fun?

The fact is that this stuff is being watched not just by adult males over the age of 18 but by children as young as you name it.

This is actually happening in societies all over the world

Every day, somewhere every minute of every day

And this in many households with children of a young age and an internet connection.

Porn does create a lot of hypocrites. 

A huge amount of porn is after all connected to strange things like teachers having sex with schoolgirls. 

Then they get married and have children. 

But they continue to watch porn

For porn is addictive . 

So now we have those who watch porn about teachers having sex with schoolchildren, and yet also sing lullabies at night to their little babies. 

There is a big hypocrisy between who these people pretend to be and who they actually are. 

And for sure it would be better for their relationship with their wives

With their sisters

With their daughters 

And with their mothers

If they weren't a person who had ever found sexual fulfilment in the abuse of a member of the female sex.

And of course as most people do not openly admit to liking porn they keep this secret

And if porn is kept secret then what else is kept secret too?

Are we talking many people?

Sadly far too many people

Is this true?

Frederick Kohun, associate dean of the School of Communications and Information Systems at Robert Morris College in Illinois, says that the PC and the Internet, have made people dysfunctional. 
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We've got too much information and not enough tools to sort through it
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We can’t process it all
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Back in the 1950s most information was stored in printed form.
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Today print makes up less than .003 percent of the total stored according to students at Berkley University who conducted a survey in 2000 on how much information is in the world. 
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The survey suggests print, film, optical, and magnetic content is growing at the rate of 1.5 billion gigabytes a year – that’s the equivalent of 250Mb per person.
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The largest percentage of stored information is digital and its is doubling annually. 
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In 2000 about 610 billion emails were sent, the web contained about 21 terabytes of static HTML pages – both are growing 100 per cent annually. 
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Usenet newsgroups generate more than three times the number of web pages.
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In March 2002 leading lawyers told the Government that proposed health and safety legislation, which includes stress as a workplace hazard, will open the way for increased litigation. 
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So far no-one’s mentioned information overload or techno-stress but you can guarantee it’ll soon become a major issue.
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Technostress is a very real 21st century disease of adaptation caused by an inability to cope with ever changing technology and the corresponding deluge of data. 
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The symptoms are mental fatigue, sore wrists, blurry vision, headaches, aching back or neck and relentless physical tiredness. 
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In the UK thousands of workers are seeking treatment for symptoms similar to psychiatric disorders, partly because of the extra stress technology has bought to the workplace.
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In the US it's estimated the average worker spends more than half the day processing documents. 
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About one-third of business managers suffer stress from 'information fatigue syndrome'.
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This results in difficulty making decisions and ultimately overflows into personal lives including relationships and the bedroom.
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Information can be addictive – some people can never get enough so decisions are never made in a timely fashion.
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There’s always a nagging uncertainty that just a little more research might make the difference.
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In our efforts to tame the tidal wave we are becoming overwhelmed by irrelevance, preferring quantity to quality.
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Insatiably pursuing information rather than the satisfaction of turning it into knowledge or wisdom.
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It’s time to be empowered by information not overpowered by it. 
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Claim your life back and put technology in its place as a tool and not a taskmaster. 
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Spend one day a week tidying up your desk and desktop, file for 'future reference' and trash the rest. 
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Deal with email messages immediately: respond or remove them. 
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I'll get around to it' probably means you won't. 
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Getting your information in formation means you’ll be able to find what you need when you need it.
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When we're stressed negativity creeps in. 
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Instead of enjoying the challenges presented to us we begin to resent every new imposition. 
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When a computer burns out you simply replace a part or upgrade the software
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With humans the damage from workplace stress can be lifelong.
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The danger lies in ignoring the areas of our lives that make us who we are.
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The physical, cultural and spiritual aspects that get lost get lost when we live in the sedentary two-dimensional world of cyberspace.
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Delegate
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Take short breaks
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Exercise
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Laugh more
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Nurture your spiritual life
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Put the spark back

10 little steps

That can and will make a difference

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The following are not deep nor are they complex
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It is something that we can all do
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1. Giving

Do things for others without being asked - volunteer to work for a charity or similar organisaton in your spare time.

2. Mixing

Connect more with people - get in touch with friends with whom you have lost contact. Go our and meet new people

3. Exercising

Take care of your body it is the only one you have and without good health life is very different - choose some activity where your body gets some good exercise.

4. Appreciating

Notice the world around you - take time to appreciate wildlife in your area - not only that appreciate what you have not what you don't..

5. Growing

Keep learning new things - keep growing it is essential to our well being and for sure your mind appreciates being stretched.

6. Direction

Think about where you want to go in life - plan a direction then live it, live life in the context of what you want to get from life.

7. Resilience

We all get knocked down by life - find ways to bounce back - learn from defeats - do things better in the future - guard your self esteem.

8. Emotion

These go up and down - be busy, be active - focus on the good in your life - take a positive approach - let go of yesterday it's gone - move on - look forward not back..

9. Acceptance

Be comfortable with who you are - learn to actively like yourself - do not dwell on your weaknesses - change them .

10. Meaning

We are all here for a reason - join in - make your contribution - be part of something bigger - join a society or club. 

Nocera's leaf

Daniel Nocera at MIT has, with his colleagues, developed what they call an artificial leaf.

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The device is an advanced solar cell, no bigger than a typical playing card, which is left floating in a pool of water. 

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Then, much like a natural leaf, it uses sunlight to split the water into its two core components, oxygen and hydrogen, which are stored in a fuel cell to be used when producing electricity

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The leaf is stable -- operating continuously for at least 45 hours without a drop in activity in preliminary tests -- and made of widely available, inexpensive materials -- like  silicon, electronics and chemical catalysts.

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It's also powerful, as much as ten times more efficient at carrying out photosynthesis than a natural leaf.

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With a single gallon of water, Nocera says, the chip could produce enough electricity to power a house in a developing country for an entire day. Provide every house on the planet with an artificial leaf and we could satisfy our 14 terrawatt need with just one gallon of water a day.
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Those are impressive claims, but they're also not just pie-in-the-sky, conceptual thoughts. 
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Nocera has already signed a contract with a global megafirm to commercialise his groundbreaking idea. 
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The mammoth Indian conglomerate, Tata Group has forged a deal fwith the MIT professor to build a small power plant, the size of a refrigerator, in about a year and a half
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This isn't the first ever artificial leaf, of course. 
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The concept of emulating nature's energy-generating process has been around for decades and many scientists have tried to create leaves in that time. 
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The first, built more than ten years ago by John Turner of the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory, was efficient at faking photosynthesis but was made of rare and hugely expensive materials. 
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It was also highly unstable, and had a lifespan of barely one day.
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For now, Nocera is setting his sights on developing countries. 
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Our goal is to make each home its own power station. 
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One can envision villages in India and Africa not long from now purchasing an affordable basic power system based on this technology.
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Mark Brown