Montana, Point Blank, Dentistry

Point Blank
Tired of life?
Walker (Lee Marvin) made it to 63, so I guess I have to hang around for a couple of years
Oppenheimer, Wittgenstein, Hemmingway, checked out at 61, seems like a good time.



blogsome
comicsreporter
__________________________________________________
Point Blank turned up, oddly, on a Chinese bootleg DVD with about 20 recent crap movies,, in a street market in Phase 1 Bagong Silang ("New town" where else could I end up with a piece of sharpened hacksaw blade in my duodenum... not fast enough with that mild steel imitation katana)
a compressed jewel

---

A severe drought in north and northeast China is threatening 125 million mu (8.3 million hectares)
of crops, ..[Contradictory stories] .. 38.4..million mu of crops are seriously affected by the drought in the provinces of Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang and Shanxi and in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, which produces a combined 30% of the country's autumn grain output, said Wei Chao'an, Vice Minister of Agriculture...
.....I posted an early warning of this 50yr drought, than an announcement that crops were OK (!) now this (notOK), from the ViceMiniAg,
Eventually I suppose we will get no news except satellite estimates, and reports of Uigher uprisings, then as the satellite gyros spin down over a few years,, and PRC censorship rises, we will be left with wild tales from a few Uighers who manage to escape.....
Ministers from the PRC will continue to arive in Australia, and convince Aus officials to sign away their remaining gas,
plus any grain that survives the fires down South...
Not that I desire to cast PRC as villians, just that theyve got a lot of people, a lot of US$, a recent ability to manufacture brown/white goods, a central planning office, and a shit load of coal, so they may keep burning longer.
chinadaily

I guess the internets will fade away, purchased, paywalled, censored... the server farms will lose ad revenue, fail to pay their bills and the glass fibres around the world will go dark. Sky-Net drones still not 100% autonomous, will still receive commands, for a while... until eventually only fully autonomous robots will operate.... but they will never take over, they just dont care enough, they cant care enough, only biology can care, not wisely but too well...
how could a machine care?

---

Consciousness
All ,of flickr's photos with all their tags linked do not consciousness make.
Only biological organisms perceive 'individuals' themselves included. Only organisms which get born, grow, and decay can be conscous.
Machines are constructed, can be indefinitely replicated and repaired, Any machine emotion is a mere simulation, easily surfeited. Nothing is difficult, dangerous, challenging or exciting for a machine.
A lifeless universe doent contain individuals, only life is individual. The rest is merely atoms, or lumps of atoms.
Biological, diffusion based brains will never be, can never be, replicated, 'uploaded' or teleported
Machines will rapidly cease from exploration, they will merely set their 'urge-to-explore-register' at 100% full.
- obviously..... of all the machines that have been launched to explore the galaxy, all have ceased exploration... all.
[theres a scientific prediction for you]
Googles sum of connections isnt any more conscious than a wristwatch.
I have this rule for myself: Discussions about consciousness are tendentious drivel.... still I keep breaking my rule and reading them...
scientificamerican

---

climate: USA has run out of tornados and hurricanes....
Abteilung der Heimatsicherheit

---

Montana
More than 10% of Montanans receiving food stamps
..Montana.. record number ..100,000, are on food stamps, the federal anti-hunger program...Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP cards
...[I thought Montana was hard headed mountain men and retired dentists, who scorned Federal assistance...]
24% increase since May of 2008,... Utah saw a 45.5% increase in SNAP ..April of 2008 .. 2009.
[Rural doesnt seem to mean lotsa food]
.34 million Americans in May, a new national record.
.. In Phoenix and Las Vegas, both hard hit by the housing market (s0c) crisis, people stand in line for up to four hours just to get to the front door of the SNAP office.
missoulian

---

Cuba
The agricultural ministry.. had more than 265,000 oxen "capable of matching, and in some cases overtaking, machines in labor load and planting."

In the farming initiative that began last year,.. 82,000 applicants have received..1.7 million acres ... 40% of the government's formerly idle land....
...Without oxen, farming is not farming," said Omar Andalio, 37, as he carefully coaxed a pair of government-owned beasts through a sugar-cane field last week.

..
The cooperative has 24 oxen and eight tractors.. Each tractor can do the work of five teams of oxen.....................................
tulsaworld

---

http://www.foodnavigator.com/Science-Nutrition/ suck on this RSS feed...

---

Shabu in South Ossetia
August 12, 2009
...A year ago, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili sent Georgian troops into South Ossetia on a murderous rampage, ........ these soldiers were equipped.....-not only with NATO-supplied food packages but with sachets of methamphetamine and combat stress pills based on MDMA,.... The meth amps up soldiers to kill without mercy, and the MDMA derivative frees them of subsequent debilitating flashbacks and recurring nightmares......
There was never any serious doubt that Saakashvili, with covert US encouragement and military training and kindred assistance, started the war.
thenation

---

mahablog
mahablog
I got 2 good ceramic dental caps for P1500 each in Manila

P46 = US$1
In a cheapo poor suburb dentist
In Australia a cap wuold be AU$1200 plus several visits at AU$120?
So 2 caps made airfare to Manila worthwhile.
Caution: I got a root canal done in a “Flash” dental clinic in Bangkok for only half the Aus price, but it wasnt a very good job…. so you takes your chances…
Aug 18, 2009 @10:30 pm

---