People who drink diet soft drinks don't lose weight. In fact, they gain weight, a new study shows.

Soda is a bad idea, no matter what chemicals are used to replace high fructose corn syrup.
[WebMD Medical News]

Reality Uber Alles
I don't watch TV. I don't have cable. I don't go to movies. I don't watch DVDs. I don't own any video games. I don't care about bands, gossip, social trends, fashion, or any other transitory diversions.

The only thing that interests me is reality. I prefer life over illusions and meaningless amusement. Entertainment is for morons.

People who can only reference life based on episodes of sitcoms, movies, and quotes from make believe characters have nothing in common with me. I prefer to talk about real ideas, plans, and experiences instead of irrelevant nonsense. The people I have always gotten along with best have no fear of honesty, so we communicate openly and do well in life even when we are handed difficult circumstances.

I am naturally good at sports and enjoy the exercise, as well as the sublimation of war when they are played at a high level of competition, but watching them is a waste of time. It simply doesn't matter which team scores more points - life goes on regardless of the outcome of a game.

When people talk about "freedom" but then live as slaves to entertainment, jobs, and social image, it can be difficult to ascertain whether they are confused, thoughtless, brainwashed, or oversocialized. In any case, words mean little and behavior demonstrates everything. If someone spends their time unproductively, their lost dreams should be no mystery for they have chosen to throw their time away on foolishness and thus deserve the nothingness they have acquired in place of real experiences and results.

Every day offers open opportunties and free time, and each person has a certain amount of energy which they can spend in pursuit of what they desire from life. The result of expending this on things that lead nowhere should be obvious, but apparently goes unconsidered by most who are stuck in a pattern of repeating this squandering day after day.

You make the world in which you live. The life you have is appropriate for you and fits you well, for it is a reflection of what you have created for yourself.

Time to go for a ride. This is our road. There won't be many cars on those roads. This place has ill fame and people try not to settle here. The farther we go, the cheaper the land, the less the people and more beautiful nature.. quite the reverse of everywhere else in the world - and a forecast of things to come.
[Heading North]

Many (11/19ths) of the 19 million Americans who go without health insurance for a full year are actually illegal immigrants, according to a new report.

States with the highest concentration of the uninsured are those that border Mexico and their neighbors, and states with large populations of illegal immigrants New York, Illinois and Florida.

"There might be as many as 11 million illegal immigrants in this country," reports Investor's Business Daily (IBD).

Undocumented workers have contributed to the Los Angeles County Health Department's $1.2 billion deficit. Last year the county spent $340 million to treat uninsured patients, and the state was hit with $1.4 billion in unreimbursed health care costs. Texas spent $850 million, and Arizona, $400 million.
[Newsmax]

The Heroic and the Timid

Last night I attended a concert of Mahler's ninth symphony and reflected on the ideas it conveyed. Most of you are probably unfamiliar with classical music (lecture omitted on the end of civilization occurring from the propagation of inferior forms and content) but in short the piece could be understood as Mahler's farewell to life, with memories of the past, dreams of what would come after him, with an ever-present energy of fear that was ultimately extinguished into silence.

Even considering biographical elements of the composition, such as his diagnosis for heart disease and impending death, Mahler's entire compositional career betrays his personal fear of death. It is expected to fight intruders that enter one's home, but death is a natural part of life and cannot be defeated; to fear the inevitable is a form of insanity. It could even be said that death is the normal state of life, and that for a brief instant in the span of the universe one is alive. To fear death rather than to venerate life and its precious, fleeting moments is a mistake suggesting errors in psychological, philosophical, and spiritual grounding.

I had to reject Mahler's last statement, as it was not from the culture that I know, and he seemed to me a weak spirit who must have suffered an entire life of misunderstanding. I only know of people who have made great efforts and often have been victorious, without consideration for expending themselves in the process. My people see the value of great accomplishments and then strive for their achievement, instead of waiting and sleeping and arguing with those incapable of thought and action. If one is not skilled for a task, but the task is necessary, then one learns what they can and does their best instead of passively waiting for a better volunteer to come forward.

"One can only truly esteem him who does not look out for himself"
-Goethe to Rath Schlosser

A traveler who has seen many lands and peoples and several of the earth's continents was asked what quality in men he had discovered everywhere he had gone. He replied: 'They have a tendency to laziness.' To many it will seem that he ought rather to have said: 'They are all timid. They hide themselves behind customs and opinions,' In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that no imaginable chance will for a second time gather into a unity so strangely variegated an assortment as he is: he knows it but he hides it like a bad conscience - why? From fear of his neighbor, to think and act like a member of a herd, and to have no joy in himself? Modesty, perhaps, in a few rare cases. With the great majority it is indolence, inertia, in short that tendency to laziness of which the traveler spoke. He is right: men are even lazier than they are timid, and fear most of all the inconveniences with which unconditional honesty and nakedness would burden them.
-F.W.N. ("Untimely Meditations", third essay)

Today, the grasp of the death-cult religion from god's cursed people remains strong over both admitted followers and secularists. Even people who have banished heaven and Jehovah and prayer to the desert god keep Judeo-Christian values alive, where they lurk as a spiritual poison. They have not found who they are, but instead obey a modern convention.

As a result of this foreign religion reaching Indo-Europeans, fear and hesitancy have crippled their spirits. One becomes afraid of life - too timid to make bold, heroic choices - instead picking what is easy. One becomes afraid of death, having been separated from everything sane and natural, and only able to see death as something that must conclude in the supernatural or is contrary to their misunderstood idea of existence. Despite prayers or other distractions, death is not banished, nor will beings live forever.

One day we will all die. Before that we will watch our friends die, our parents die, our heroes die, maybe even our hopes die. We can cultivate stronger, better people and a healthy understanding of this cycle so it is accepted and carries no externally generated fear, but in all cases death will take us away.

Our life is short but that is enough, if we do what is right.

The West - and now the world - has for too long been grasped by this existential doubt. Although we have done well so far, our success has been mixed, in that for all of our genius, and all of our inventions and successes, we are still plagued by this internal failure, and our illusions of reality have caused us to push ourselves onto a path to sure collapse. It would be nice, surely, to find something internal to this system of thought that we could eliminate, and thus move forward with only the good parts, but the plain truth of it seems to be that our basic philosophy restrains us. We could have all that we have, and more, if we were able to organize our energies toward positive ends, and not condemn ourselves with neurosis. Yet that neurosis comes with our basic worldview, and explains why for every good thing we've done, we've also brought doom upon ourselves in the subtlest of fashions, that of a long-term imminent collapse. With this slow death lurking in the wings, naturally neurosis worsens, and the hysterical paranoia that results divides us further and only hastens the collapse.
[ANUS.COM]

If you think the wars over oil are a problem, wait until you see what the water wars will bring. Activity is already beginning!

In contravention of international law Israel plans to dump 10,000 tons of garbage in the West Bank each month.

The controversial move will jeopardize Palestinian water sources.

Haaretz newspaper reported Monday that dump operators plan to deposit some 10,000 tons of garbage from the Dan and Sharon regions every month in what was known as the Abu Shusha quarry, the largest in the West Bank.
[BigNewsNetwork]

A lackluster final statement by the pope crowns his "moral leadership" with a blatant theft of the pop lyrics "don't worry, be happy." How insightful! And how embarrassing to have died while dressed as Santa Claus and then mourned by openly gay jews in a third rate Shakespearean production. Who was the stage designer for this horrible play?

As we march blindly towards extinction

The most comprehensive survey ever into the state of the planet concludes that human activities threaten the Earth's ability to sustain future generations.
...
Two services - fisheries and fresh water - are said now to be well beyond levels that can sustain current, much less future, demands.

[BBC News]

I need to know that important piece of information and you're not giving it to me.

The scholarly person is a genuine paradox: all around he is faced with the most horrible problems, he saunters past abysses and he picks a flower in order to count its filaments. It is not apathy with regard to knowledge: for he has a burning desire to acquire knowledge and discover things, and he knows no greater pleasure than increasing the store of knowledge. But he behaves like the proudest idler upon whom fortune ever smiled, as if existence were not something hopeless and questionable, but rather a firm possession guaranteed to last forever.

Moreover, at the present time he has begun to work at such a frantic pace that one must imagine scholarship as a factory in which for any delay of mere minutes the scholarly laborer deserves to be punished. He labors, he no longer pursues a calling, he looks neither left nor right and goes through all the matters of life, even those that are questionable in nature, with the half-attention or with the odious need for rest and recreation characteristic of the exhausted laborer. He behaves as if for him life were only otium, but otium sine dignitate; like a slave who even in his dreams does not throw off this yoke. Perhaps we will have assessed the great mass of scholars correctly if we initially view them as farmers: with a tiny inherited property, diligently occupied day and night in planting the field, pulling the plow, and prodding the oxen.

Pascal believes that human beings pursue their occupations and their scholarship and science so zealously so as to flee from those questions that every moment of solitude forces upon them -- those questions about the whence? the how? and the whither? But it is even more amazing that the most obvious questions do not even occur to them: What is the purpose of this labor? What is the purpose of this frantic pace? What is the purpose of this frenzy? Perhaps to earn one's bread? No. And yet in the manner of those who must earn their bread. All scholarship is useless claptrap as soon as the human being treats it in the same manner as he treats tasks of labor foisted upon him by need and the afflictions of life. Culture is possible without your scholarship; as is demonstrated by the Greeks. Mere curiousity is not worthy of such a lofty name. As long as you do not understand how to mix in the appropriate dose of crude experience, philosophy, and art to counteract your scholarly life, then you will be just as unworthy of culture as you are incapable of it. A future generation will be paralyzed at the sight of the uniformity of your actual lives and thoughts: how meager and impoverished is your actual experience of the world, how bookish your judgements. Some disciplines allow themselves to be stampeded by herds of scholars, others do not; and it is precisely the latter that you avoid. Just think of your scholarly organizations, just look how they are made up of exhaustion, the need for diversion, and literary reminiscences. Scholarship itself has entered a period of decline, in spite of all its methods and instruments: and your great universities with their impressive apparatuses, their laboratories and spectatories, spectators and laborers -- they remind one of arsenals replete with enormous cannons and other weapons of war: we are horrified at the preparations, but in actual war no one has any use for such machines. That's how things are for the great universities: they stand apart from all culture, but, by contrast, are open to all the questionable movements of contemporary nonculture. A professor is a being whose lack of cultivation and crude sense of taste simply can be taken for granted, as long as he has not demonstrated otherwise. When I think of the vulgarity of your political or theological views...when I think about how your professors pursue aesthetics, how in the discipline of art your universities have only reached the level of men's choruses, how stolidly you stay away from all productive forces -- then at least I know that you do not deserve any more compassion, you are the laborers in the factory -- but where culture is concerned, you can be viewed only as impediments.

-F.W.N., Unpublished Writings, Spring-Autumn 1873

Looking back in contemplation of past relationships that didn't work out, I am mostly overjoyed.

A relationship should never be a struggle or work of confusion, as all that is harmonious in nature is sure-footed and self-revealing. Difficulties are good hints of incompatibility, even if not apparent while caught under the spell of love's vast hope.

Though many adults work hard to sustain a relationship, this is mostly a compromise after having already invested too much time in someone and being too weary to make a fresh attempt with someone else. People don't fundamentally change no matter the threats hung over them or what promises or concessions they superficially offer. The same underlying problems will persist, though they can gradually become accepted as normal for that relationship simply because they have always been there, no matter how dysfunctional or insane.

When reduced to its essential aspects, there are really only two things needed for a good relationship.

1. Communication - This is easy between two people unafraid of reality. Unfortunately most people today have little connection to reality and believe that avoidance of discussion keeps them safe from the implications of the topic being avoided; yet the world remains in motion even if your eyes are covered.

2. Matching spirits - A person with whom you can have a good relationship will have a spirit compatible with yours. This does not require an equal spirit, but it does mean one that fittingly laughs, dances, and plays with yours.

The rest comes easily, or quickly reveals itself as impossible.

10 Benefits of Jehovah's Favor

1. Supernatural increase & promotion. (Genesis 39:21)
2. Restoration of all the enemy has stolen. (Exodus 3:21)
3. Honor in the midst of adversaries. (Exodus 11:3)
4. Increased assets, especially real estate. (Deuteronomy 33:23)
5. Greater victories in the midst of greater odds or imposibilities. (Joshua 11:20)
6. Recognition even when I seem to be the least likely to receive it. (I Samuel 16:22)
7. Prominence & preferential treatment. (Esther 2:17)
8. Petitions granted even by ungodly civil authorities. (Esther 5:8)
9. Policies, rules, regulations, laws changed to my advantage. (Esther 8:5)
10.Battles won I won't have to fight because God fights for me. (Psalm 44:3)

Growth from death - just as winter kills and spring gives birth, sometimes we need a little death so that we can be rejuvenated and breath anew. It is not as if winter and spring are antagonists; rather, spring provides winter with something to ultimately kill and winter clears space so that spring can grow unencumbered.

I want to be with you without any language
to see new worlds emerge from the spark in your eyes
to wander without words still knowing your thoughts
to linger in your warmth

Winchester, Kentucky -- A Winchester, Kentucky high school student who wrote a fictional short story about zombies overrunning a school has been arrested and faces felony charges of publishing literature offensive to the government, according to Clark County, Kentucky, media and police officials. "Anytime you ... possess matter involving a school or function it's a felony in the state of Kentucky," Winchester Police detective Steven Caudill said of the fictional zombie story.

At the bond hearing, Poole pleaded for his release:

"It's a fake story. I made it up. I've been working on one of my short stories, (and) the short story they found was about zombies. Yes, it did say a high school. It was about a high school over ran by zombies ... It didn't mention nobody who lives in Clark County, didn't mention (George Rogers Clark High School), didn't mention no principal or cops, nothing"

But William Poole, 18, saw his bond increased by a local judge who ruled that writers of zombie stories pose a serious threat to the local community. His bond, at $5,000, is higher than the bond usually given to thieves, drunks and people accused of petty assault violence. [Overthrow.com]

Antisocialism is a philosophy of rejection, resulting from a negative assessment of:

1. overpopulation, crowding, and perpetual expansion - People need space in which they can live, but there are too many people in too many places which increasingly forces compromise towards lower standards and behavior.
2. oversocialization, humanism, egalitarianism, and political correctness - these are misunderstandings and dysfunction that solve nothing and muddle the whole.
3. noise, entertainment, and media culture - In a society that hates ideas, the ready-made answers from "authoritative" sources are taken seriously, while the consumption of mind-numbing entertainment is considered normal behavior. Attempts to think are deftly opposed by constant noise and interruption.
4. individualism, ego, freedom, rights - Those who imagine themselves as entities floating in space without a past or future call this "freedom" although they enslave themselves to meaninglessness. Having rejected Traditional society, they then call upon modernity to give them rights they have dismissed through their "freedom" of functionlessness and insist that others treat them as though they were important.
5. progress, technology, modernism - Blindly moving in an unknown direction at breakneck speed is hardly prudent, especially when engaged in idealistic social experiments for which no one knows the consequences and for which early results look very bad. This error is compounded by its advocates who have failed to be educated, are incapable of understanding how complex systems work, and who reject reality in favor of their chosen delusions.

Although America is far from banning the culture of intellectuality, it certainly nurtures an instinctive indifference towards it, and to the degree that intellectuality does not become an instrument of something practical, it is almost as if it were a luxury that those who are intent upon serious things (such as "getting rich fast", "volunteer work," and sundry campaigns and lobbies to promote various social issues) should not indulge in. Generally speaking, in the USA, while men work, women get involved in "spiritual issues"; hence the strong percentage of women in countless sects and societies in which spiritualism, psychoanalysis, and counterfeits of Eastern doctrines are mixed with humanitarianism, feminism, and sentimentalism, as well as with social versions of puritanism and scientism -- all things that truly reflect the American understanding of "spirituality."
- Julius Evola

Some people died in a tsunami, mostly third world people who lack the ability to create civilization, but also some vacationing Europeans who liked indulging in novel leisure activity away from home.

With the earth so terribly overpopulated, it seems odd to call a numerically insignificant loss of human lives a "tragedy." Neither does it make much sense to send money to those people when there are so many other underfunded issues.

In the end it's all about being a "good" person according to Judeo-Christian thinking, which means to give to the inferior for an ego boost, while forgetting that they will in turn propagate, giving you more of the problem you are trying to pay them to overcome.

The entire problem of modernity could be considered a result of such (non) thinking. Every problem has a clear and traceable root, but Judeo-Christian morality prevents us from solving them. Instead we make up justifications, idealizations, lies, and distractions so we don't have to face reality.