Here i was minding my own business when *crash* the latest think-geek email comes in. I'm suddenly left with the overwhelming desire to wear Jack's coat. Maybe then i'll be cool enough to be invited to those kinds of parties. 

What a great article on Jealousy. I know i get pretty jealous from time to time. I know others who are constantly comparing others to themselves. This is such a great reminder.

Ancient Philosophy and Modern Personal Development

Written by Stephen Cox -
Categories: philosophy

It is a common occurrence when someone is trying to take a step up in terms of their diet or exercise regime for unexpected saboteurs to appear. Most often the source of the sabotage is those who we had expected the greatest support from. This includes our partner, our mother or our best friend. Usually they do have our best interests at heart. Regardless, they often advise against what may appear to them to be an extreme or unusual path that we have chosen.

The result of this sabotage is doubt. We begin to question our own decisions. Perhaps I shouldn’t push myself quite so hard when I exercise. Maybe it is ok to break out of my dietary plan every now and again. Do I really want to continue with this fast? I’ve seen it happen and experienced it myself on numerous occasions. The disapproval of others, particularly those closest to us, however misguided and uninformed, can take the wind right out of our sails.

While this issue rears its head most often along the path of physical health it is also not uncommon on the journey of personal development. If you have experienced this problem you should know that you are neither alone nor is it a new problem. The ancient philosophers in their love of wisdom (the definition of philosophy) observed its occurrence in their own time.

It was Epictetus who said, “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.” This is because many people are simply being swept along with the flow and the direction of the flow is dictated by popular opinion and “common” sense. Alain de Botton in his book The Consolations of Philosophy elegantly stated that, “the approval of others often forms an essential part of our capacity to think we are right.”

Personal development and growth often does not fit so well into the mold of consumerism, materialism and rat race work ethic that is currently prevalent in society. Quit your secure 9 – 5 job for something that pays less, is more work and looks risky and others will not only think you’re crazy, they’ll tell you so as well.

You may have realized that the pay’s good but the secure job is meaningless because it doesn’t fit your core values. Really it is a vampire that has got you by the neck and is gleefully sucking your soul dry. It’s probably the same for most of the people you work with. Just they don’t have the courage to do anything about it.

Many people resist, mistrust and fear both change and journeying into the unknown. The journey of personal development requires us to embrace change. Growth and change are at the very heart of what we are trying to achieve. Hunter Thompson once asked: “Who is the happier man? He who braved the stormy sea of life and survived? Or he who stayed securely on the shore and merely existed?” Because of their own fear the people on the shore often try to stop those who want to live the real adventure of life out on the ocean.

What you should keep in mind when others knowingly or unknowingly throw up barriers to your progress is that we are each completely responsible for ourselves. It is no use blaming others for your failure to take action and follow through on what you knew in your heart was right. It is your life and however you might like to shift the blame it is you who has to live it.

Socrates, possibly the most famous philosopher of all time, spent his life questioning what was held to be common sense. Socrates concluded that a correct point of view cannot be determined as such simply by whether it is held by a majority, or believed for a long time by influential people. That said you should know that the opinion of the majority being equal to truth is deeply ingrained into western culture. This conditioning dates all the way back to the democratic society of ancient Greece. Democracy is majority rule.

So as you continue to grow and change those currently close to you may begin to resent you and feel like they can no longer understand you. You should be prepared for this and know that it is okay. If it becomes necessary let go of your relationship with love and gratitude for their friendship and move on. Don’t fall into the trap of returning resentment with resentment. This will only drag your energy back down from the level you’ve worked so hard to achieve. Instead consider how they suffer from their own fear and mental disquiet and feel compassion for them. At some point it is likely that you were in their position.

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This post was written by Stephen Cox of Balanced Existence.

I Love Social Bookmarking

I think that everyone of my friends and family, myself included, needs to be reminded of a great many things Socrates and Epictetus and so many others have concluded long before our own western culture that has taken over our world's societies. Let's all take a moment to read some texts that are older than those of our culture and our culture's ancestors. Perhaps there's a glimmer or two there that we can take to heart.

I think i'm more sickened by the Lacey Act revisions than any of this, though all of this is deplorable. Gosh, really? Raids on a guitar factory? They have a zero tolerance policy on protected woods, but when thousands upon thousands of guns are illegally transported across our borders, back and forth, they look the other way. Hey! maybe its an investment. Who ends up keeping the forbidden contraband? I'll bet the hoops get smaller when the guitar or piano in question is 200 years old whether it's made of now-protected woods or ivory or not.

Senate antipiracy legislation introduced Thursday would dramatically increase the government’s legal power to disrupt and shutter websites “dedicated to infringing activities.”

A major feature of the Protect IP Act, introduced by 11 senators of all stripes, would grant the government the authority to bring lawsuits against these websites, and obtain court orders requiring search engines like Google to stop displaying links to them.

“Both law enforcement and rights holders are currently limited in the remedies available to combat websites dedicated to offering infringing content and products,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), the bill’s main sponsor.

The proposal is an offshoot to the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act introduced last year. It was scrapped by its authors in exchange for the Protect IP Act in a bid to win Senate passage.

Under the old COICA draft, the government was authorized to obtain court orders to seize so-called generic top-level domains ending in .com, .org and .net. The  new legislation (.pdf), with the same sponsors, narrows that somewhat.

Instead of allowing for the seizure of domains, it allows the Justice Department to obtain court orders demanding American ISPs stop rendering the DNS for a particular website — meaning the sites would still be accessible outside the United States.

Either way, though, the legislation amounts to the holy grail of intellectual-property enforcement that the recording industry, movie studios and their union and guild workforces have been clamoring for since the George W. Bush administration.

 

“As the guilds and unions that represent 400,000 creators, performers and craftspeople who create the multitude of diverse films, television programs and sound recordings that are enjoyed by billions of people around the world, we unequivocally support this bill which, by providing protection for our members’ work, clearly shows that our government will not condone or permit the wholesale looting of the American economy and American creativity and ingenuity — regardless of how that looting is disguised on the internet to fool the American consumer,” (.pdf) a host of unions said Wednesday, including the American Federation of Musicians, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Directors Guild of America.

The new bill also gives content owners more rights than the old bill. It would allow rights holders to seek court orders instructing online ad services and credit card companies from partnering with the infringing sites — a power the government is granted in either legislative version.

Only the government gets the DNS blocking powers. And the Digital Millennium Copyright Act already grants rights holders the ability to demand search engines to stop displaying search results linking to infringing sites.

Despite the new bill watering down the United States’ reach, the government has been invoking an asset-forfeiture law to seize generic top-level domains of infringing websites under a program called Operation in Our Sites.” It began last year, and the Department of Homeland Security has targeted 120 sites.

Abigail Phillips, a copyright attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said because of Operation in Our Sites, the DNS changeover “doesn’t seem all that meaningful.”

Sherwin Siy, deputy legal director at Public Knowledge, noted that the measure does not narrowly define the websites that could be targeted.

“The bill still defines a site as ‘dedicated to infringing activities,’ if it is designed or marketed as ‘enabling or facilitating’ actions that are found to be infringing,” he said. “In other words, even if the site isn’t itself infringing copyright, if its actions ‘enable or facilitate’ someone else’s infringement, the government can tell ISPs to blacklist your site, and copyright holders can sue to cut your funding.”

If we let this go through, it'll just be a small step before they take the right to scrutinize your website and censor things they may find undesirable. Fight big government.

Losing constitutional faith? Don’t read this (via Michael Walsh).

Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.

In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer’s entry.

So a husband and wife are arguing loudly outside. When the police attempt to enter the man’s home he blocks the doorway and resists efforts of law enforcement to come inside (before police use a stun gun to incapacitate him, that is.)

I suspect most of us can be sympathetic to the idea of preemptively stopping violence, if possible. But if law enforcement is handed free rein to rely on their own judgment, what stops the cops from forcibly entering a person’s home, against the wishes of the owner, whenever they are suspicious that violence is — sorry, might be – occurring?

Oh, and what ever happened to the Fourth Amendment?

One of the dissenting judges, it should be noted, wrote that, “The wholesale abrogation of the historic right of a person to reasonably resist unlawful police entry into his dwelling is unwarranted and unnecessarily broad.” Ya think?

OMG, Can you say gateway to tyranny? This has been in the books since the Magna Carta. This was reiterated in the 4th amendment. The loss of our 4th ammendment rights will be a stepping stone to a complete loss of all of our rights and sovereignty. It's all down hill from here folks, if we don't do something, there will be no stopping the federal government taking all of our freedoms.

Government Radiation Expert Deconstructs Myth Of “Safe” Radiation Levels

ok, so this is an op-ed, but everything he says is spot on, and super interesting. i'm looking for a Geiger Counter. anyone know of a good deal?

Chicago school bans some lunches brought from home

To encourage healthful eating, Chicago school doesn't allow kids to bring lunches or certain snacks from home — and some parents, and many students, aren't fans of the policy

I'm reminded of those bits in the movie 'THX-1138' where they open up the medicine cabinet and a camera focuses in the middle of the back of the cabinet and a voice says: " If you feel you are not properly sedated, call 348-844 immediately. Failure to do so may result in prosecution for criminal drug evasion." or my favorite, when the guys says " I just bought one of these yesterday, and it doesn't fit my consumer, and the store doesn't have any of the other kind." and the voice in the medicine cabinet says, "For more enjoyment and greater efficiency, consumption is being standardized. We are sorry ... " one size fits all only really fits one comfortably and the rest of us have to make due.

Supreme Court rules prosecutors can lie and fabricate evidence

Posted by cneditor on April 10th, 2011

COMMENT: The Supreme Court’s decision in Connick v. Thompson virtually gives license to prosecutors to lie, fabricate or withhold evidence, since they apparently can’t be held accountable for knowingly or intentionally sending an innocent man to prison and even death row.

Washington Post
Posted April 10, 2011

WASHINGTON – An ideologically divided Supreme Court on Tuesday stripped a million award from a wrongfully convicted man who had spent 14 years on death row and successfully sued New Orleans prosecutors for misconduct.

[A dissenting Ginsburg] said the actions of prosecutors under the control of Connick, who left office in 2003 and is the father of the famous singer of the same name, “dishonored” the obligation to turn over evidence favorable to the accused established in Brady v. Maryland, nearly 50 years ago.

There is no dispute that one of Connick’s prosecutors did not turn over a blood test that would have shown Thompson innocent of one of the charges against him. But Thomas said that a single incident is not enough to prove liability for the district attorney’s office and that Thompson did not show a pattern of similar violations.

Thompson was convicted of armed robbery in 1985, before he stood trial for the murder of Raymond Liuzza, the son of a prominent New Orleans hotel owner. Prosecutors used the armed robbery conviction as a way to coerce Thompson not to take the stand in his own defense, and, after conviction, to secure the death penalty. A pair of lawyers at a large Philadelphia law firm took up his case to spare him death; at one point, Thompson came within weeks of execution.

But in 1999, an investigator discovered that a blood test conducted in the armed robbery case showed that Thompson was not the perpetrator. Prosecutors acknowledged that it was withheld from Thompson’s attorneys.

Read full article

High court says exonerated inmate cannot sue prosecutors

Bill Mears
CNN
April 10, 2011

Washington (CNN) — A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled against a former death row inmate who sought damages from the state after prosecutors hid crucial blood tests that would have earlier proven his innocence. The 5-4 decision Tuesday involved John Thompson, who came within weeks of execution and had spent 18 years behind bars before being set free after the new forensic evidence came to light.

At issue was whether a district attorney’s office should be held liable, under a “failure to train” standard, when one of its prosecutors unconstitutionally withholds exculpatory evidence from a criminal defendant.

Then-New Orleans area District Attorney Harry Connick Sr. claimed his office should not be held fully responsible after one of his staff attorneys violated long-standing, accepted procedures on handling evidence in criminal trials.

Thompson’s lawyers said the DA’s office as a whole should be held liable for the poor training of prosecutors working under Connick.

Read full article

ROGUE PROSECUTORS GET LICENSE TO LIE AND CHEAT

Connick v. Thompson: U.S. Supreme Court Allows Prosecutors to Hide Evidence Favorable to the Accused without Consequence

Houston Criminal Lawyer John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
JohnTFloyd.com
Posted April 10, 2011

What the Supreme Court Held

Essentially, the Court ruled that a district attorney’s office cannot held liable under § 1983 for a failure to train its prosecutors based on a single Brady violation (prosecutorial misconduct). The Court adhered by a standard it set in 1977 in Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Services which requires an individual suing a local government municipality prove that his/her injury was caused by an action taken pursuant to an “official municipality policy” and requires a showing that decisions by the government’s lawmakers (such as a city council or a district attorney’s office), as well as acts by its “policymaking officials,” are wrongful practices so “persistent and widespread as to practically have the force of law.”

Thompson did not try to prove a pattern of similar Brady violations by the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office, although he did point to four reversals of convictions for Brady violations by the Louisiana courts emanating out of Connick’s office during the ten years prior to his trial. The Supreme Court casually dismissed these four reversals, saying they were dissimilar to Thompson’s situation and, therefore, could not have put Connick on notice that there was a need for Brady training among his assistants.

We’re not making this stuff up. That’s what Justice Clarence Thomas said, and he was joined by Justices Roberts, Scalia, Alito, and Kennedy. But let’s look at the facts. Thompson was put to trial in 1985. During the 23-year period from the pronouncement of the Brady rule in 1963 by the Supreme Court and Thompson’s trial, Brady was cited, followed or distinguished in 40 cases decided by the high court, in 222 cases by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and in 179 cases by the Louisiana Supreme Court and the state’s courts of appeals. That’s a total 441 cases in which Brady was explained, discussed, or just mentioned by those various federal and state courts before Thompson was put to trial.

Just how much notice did District Attorney Harry Connick need that his assistants needed “training” in this area of law; namely, that district attorneys could not lie and cheat by fabricating evidence, concealing favorable evidence from the defense, and encouraging or at the least sanctioning perjured testimony in order to secure criminal convictions. This was evidenced by a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court in Kyles v. Whitley, a precedent ruling in an Orleans Parish capital murder conviction that sent Curtis Lee Kyles to Louisiana’s death row where he joined Thompson. Kyles, like Thompson, was innocent and the New Orleans police built its case around him through a well-known informant. Prior to Kyles trial, his defense attorney filed a Brady motion seeking discovery of all exculpatory evidence, and despite having in its possession at least 7 pieces of critical evidence that tended to exonerate Kyles, one of Connick’s assistants told a bald faced lie to the court, saying we have “no exculpatory evidence of any nature.”

Even though the Kyles decision was handed down 10 years after Thompson was convicted, it was at the very least prima facie evidence that deliberate, methodical, and unethical Brady violations had been a fixture in Harry Connick’s office since his election as Orleans Parish District Attorney in 1973. The repeated reversals of criminal convictions over a 20-year period for Brady violations—ten years before and 10 years after Thompson’s conviction—was more than ample evidence that Connick was not only aware of this pattern of systemic prosecutorial misconduct in his office but that he ignored, condoned, or perhaps even encouraged, the “convict at any costs” mentality associated with Brady violation convictions. What does seem obvious is that there was no serious training, or strict policies in place, demanding that that Brady be followed or that exculpatory evidence be turned over to the defense.

Our Conclusions

We endorse everything Justice Ginsburg said about the John Thompson travesty. We believe Justice Thomas, and his conservative brethren, have given rogue prosecutors a virtual free pass to lie and cheat, even when they knowingly send innocent people to prison. These five justices have given constitutional blessing to the deplorable, shameful, and ever-increasing taint of prosecutorial misconduct in our legal system, and that is a judicial disgrace. The law, and its constitutional foundation, can be twisted and manipulated to achieve any objective, too often political ones. And that is precisely what we believe occurred in the Thompson case—a decision by pro-prosecution justices designed to cover and insulate prosecutorial misconduct.

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Little by little, piece by piece, government is taking away our ability to fight injustices, fight the friends of government, fight for our rights... our unalienable rights are being alienated right in front of us. And here we stare, blankly...