Reinforcing the Continuum - Political Blurring
I recently had the opportunity to listen to Alex Jones' Infowars bounced around the world on 12160 kHz from the 100,000 watt flamethrower of WWCR - World Wide Christian Radio in Nashville, TN.
It is interesting to hear this show broadcast and/or supported by traditionally "right" institutions who rail against the "enviro wackos" as those down on mediumwave and 24-hour cable would call them.
The show discusses, in rather potent context, conspiracies and dangers both real and perceived surrounding water fluoridation, mercury in vaccines, the pharmaceutical industry, bisphenol-A in plastics, genetically-modified foods, Monsanto and friends, depleted uranium used in weapons, and bailout of the FIRE industry.
Wow. They say they don't like the enviro-hippie-ecofemme-socialst-greenies yet they seem to lock step with them on everything, especially in the realms of economic downsizing, relocalization, and reduction in the use of products of unknown consequence. This could include fossil fuels for the unknown consequence of the carbon dioxide they emit.
On all of the far-right shortwave programs there are advertisements for alternative medicines, self-sufficiency guidebooks, "green" products, and plenty of scammers tapping into fear and ignorance to make a buck (look up Plasma pH Drops on the web for a blatant money racket).
Solar "backup generators" are advertised on the web site along with information on how to grow one's own food. They even have advertisers selling stills to produce ethanol to fuel your car and get you drunk at the same time!
Humans are analog devices. There is never a binary "yes or no", "with or against", "right or left" when dealing with these things, whether they be politics, sexuality, personality, or any other trait.
Enslaved to Technology
Technology is the reason we are fat. Technology is the reason we have sleeping problems. Technology is the reason we work harder and harder and harder even with so many "labor saving" devices being engineered, high-grade fossil energy to haul us around on wheels at a mile per minute, and 90-second microwave insta-meals on throw-away Styrofoam plates saving us on cooking and other domestic chores.
We find scapegoats for environmental degradation (It's China's Fault! ) and expensive energy (Damn ExxonMobil! ) resulting from consumption so that we may not feel the guilt of our addiction to air conditioning, mobile phones, cars, big TVs, and Big Macs.
We built all of these things to be our servants, to make our lives easier and more enjoyable. Instead we've become servants to the machines.
Facebook "face recognition"
I have a photo in an album on my Facebook account. Shown below, it consists of the "Mr. Yuck" Poison Control stickers which I found stuck to a wall underneath a bridge.
MR. YUCK STICKERS
While using Facebook, a cropped version of the photo appeared in the upper right corner of the page, asking me "Who's face is this?"
WHO'S FACE IS THIS?
Domestic Manufacturing: Higher wages, or cheaper stuff?
Corning Glass is manufacturing a product known as "Gorilla Glass". Its primary use is in flat-panel displays for TVs and portable devices, most of which are manufactured in Asian nations. Because the consumer base is in Asia, it makes sense to manufacture the breakable glass in Asia. Commentators on the article aren't happy with this, citing that they should make the glass domestically and ship it to Asia. Link to article.
Labor is the greatest cost in manufacturing. If we were to domestically produce all of the stuff that we like to consume, the purchase price of that stuff would have to be greatly increased.
Make a decision: Higher wages, or cheaper stuff? So far we've chosen "cheaper stuff" The "Consumer" in their ultimate wisdom buys the inexpensive garbage that will be thrown in the trash in two weeks over the more expensive, better-made products. What do they expect? Making that stuff here? I would feel ashamed if such trash was being produced in my country.
We do some fairly odd things regarding commerce and manufacturing: such as mining bauxite in Australia, shipping it to Iceland for smelting to aluminum, which is shipped to China to be cast and extruded into parts, which are shipped to Japan to be assembled into a TV set, which is shipped to the U.S. to be sold and used. And once the TV's life is up, it is shipped to China to be "recycled". Globalization is a product of cheap high-grade energy.
PHP on Windows: php_curl.dll: The specified module could not be found
I use PHP on Windows with Apache as a web development server, and ran into a problem when writing a script which uses the cURL module. After enabling the module in php.ini, Apache restart produced the following message:
PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library 'C:\PHP\ext\php_curl.dll' - The specified module could not be found.
This error message can be misleading, as it can appear even if the php_curl.dll file is in the correct location. The cURL library requires two DLL files - libeay32.dll and ssleay32.dll - both provided in the PHP distibution, to be placed in your Windows system directory (C:\WINDOWS\system32\).
These files can be found in your PHP distribution root directory (such as C:\PHP\). Copy them to the system directory and php_curl should then be functional.