I recorded this video 2 days ago and posted it on 2012 Explained, but why not make a quick post about it? I recorded this because I still get a lot of emails regarding 2012 and this is the most complete answer I can give without going into too much details. I mean, there’s a new theory everyday regarding 2012 and there’s no way I can study each of them and I don’t want to anyway. I feel the subject has been covered here at Daily Common Sense with my articles, but also with the comments and the forum.
The most complete and straight forward answer I can give to “Is 2012 true?” and “Are we gonna die?” is the following: “It’s a business”. People are building businesses around 2012 with a complete business model and the goal is to generate money by spreading fear. It does work pretty well. Anyway, I won’t go into details here as it is what I’m talking about in the video. Enjoy and let me know what you think. Read More→
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - A New Mexico appeals court on Friday ruled against a Los Alamos man who wanted to change his name to a phrase containing a popular four-letter obscenity.
The man appealed after a state district judge in Bernalillo County refused his request to change his name to “Fuck Censorship!”
Judge Nan Nash ruled that the proposed name change was “obscene, offensive and would not comport with common decency.”
The man - whose current legal name is Variable - argued on appeal that it was improper government censorship to deny him the name change.
“We do not believe that the district’s court action infringes on petitioner’s right to free speech,” a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals said in its ruling.
The man has the right to call himself whatever he wants, unless there’s fraud or misrepresentation involved, the judges said.
But once he seeks court approval for a name change, the court has the authority to turn him down on several grounds, including if the name is offensive to common decency and good taste, the judges ruled.
That law was clarified in a 2004 case in the same court that apparently involved the same petitioner. In that case, an Albuquerque man whose name was Snaphappy Fishsuit Mokiligon got the go-ahead from the appeals court to change his name to Variable.
Wait there’s more! The man actually uploaded a video on YouTube to argue about the decision and how he thinks he got ‘censored’:
I’m sorry, but what a jerk! This has nothing to do with censorship, the name is just plain obscene. You know, sometimes I ask myself: “Why are there so many stupid restrictions in our society?”. With that story, I just figured part of the answer.
I’m shocked. I was browsing today and I stumbled on this article from thisislondon.co.uk. The article is about a man who today confessed that he imprisoned his daughter in an underground chamber for 24 years and fathered her seven children. How discusting is that?
Here’s a quick overview of the article:
Elisabeth Fritzl, 42, was raped repeatedly since being lured into the dungeon built below the family home in a small Austrian town. Police said she had been “broken” by the experience.
Josef Fritzl, 73, admitted to police that all the children were his.
Three of them - Kerstin, 19, Stefan, 18, and Felix, five - were held captive with their mother in a series of windowless rooms and never saw the sunlight until they were freed on Saturday.
Incredibly, three others, Alexander, 12, Monika, 14, and Lisa, 16, were raised in the home by Fritzl and his wife. They were adopted by the couple and went to school, leading apparently normal lives.
The other child, a twin, died shortly after birth and the body burned by Fritzl in a boiler. Detectives today revealed details of the complex of rooms where Elisabeth was held since August 1984.
The three children kept prisoner with her were born there and are thought to have spent their entire lives underground.
Franz Polzer, head of the criminal investigations unit in the province of Lower Austria, said: “He has now said that he locked up his daughter for 24 years and that he alone fathered her seven children and that he locked them up in the cellar.”
I know, this is horrible and I’m totally out of words. You can read the full article on thisislondon.co.uk if you want more details as there are pictures of the cellar his daughter was kept in and a detailed analysis of the situation. Not that it’s THAT interesting, but just to get an idea of what that girl went through.
What if a color test could give you more information on your personality? Well, this is what ColorQuiz.com is offering to you:
This test is partially based on research by Dr. Max Lûscher during the early 1900’s. He has devoted his life to the study of how color affects behavior and has been hired by some of the world’s largest companies as a consultant.
The test itself is based upon fundamentals in color psychology. With years of research by color psychologists the characteristics of certain colors has been identified to cause an emotional response in people. This was done by studying the response from hundreds of thousands of test subjects around the world in order to isolate how certain colors make us feel. By doing the reverse, using the colors people prefer to determine how people feel, we can get some interesting indicators about a person’s current emotional state.
It is important to understand that the results from tests like this can be both short-term and long-term in their meaning. For example, if you are feeling depressed about something when you take the test you may see this reflected in your results. You may also notice deeper conflicts showing themselves consistantly if you take the test time and time again. This test can be taken quite often and still yield results that are accurate. The results will not be the same each time you take the test, for the most part, unless you are taking them without some time interval between them.
The test is widely used in Europe and overseas. There are very few experts of Luscher’s work in the United States, so for some of our American visitors the notions behind this test may seem rather strange…But give the test a try and you will be surprised!
I strongly invite you to take the test and comment on your results. I took the test and don’t have any problems with posting the results so here they are. My results are quite surprising and particularly accurate, but you know, it’s sometime a question of interpretation so that’s why it would be interesting to see other results.
Ben’s Existing Situation (accurate)
Is seeking a solution to existing problems or anxieties, but is liable to find it difficult to decide on a right course to follow.
Ben’s Stress Sources (accurate)
Wishes to be independent, unhampered, and free from any limitation or restriction, other than those which he imposes of himself or by his own choice and decision.
Ben’s Restrained Characteristics (Not really accurate, except maybe for “Able to achieve satisfaction from sexual activity” )
Feels rather isolated and alone, but is too reserved to allow himself to form deep attachments. Egocentric and therefore quick to take offense.Feels that he cannot do much about his existing problems and difficulties and that he must make the best of things as they are. Able to achieve satisfaction from sexual activity.
Ben’s Desired Objective (accurate)
Intense, vital, and animated, taking a delight in action. Activity is directed towards success or conquest and there is a desire to live life to the fullest.
Ben’s Actual Problem (accurate)
Fights against restriction or limitation, and insists on developing freely as a result of his own efforts.
GRAFENWOHR, Germany — Legislation that would restrict the sale of certain men’s magazines on U.S. military bases around the world would be bad for morale, according to soldiers at Grafenwöhr.
U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., has introduced legislation that would close a loophole in the current law that allows the sale of some sexually explicit material on military bases by lowering the threshold required to deem material “sexually explicit.”
A Department of Defense committee that reviews materials sold on bases ruled last year that magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse are not pornographic. But Broun’s Military Honor and Decency Act includes language that could make those magazines eligible for the ban.
The main argument about this is that allowing the sale of pornography on military bases has harmed military men and women by escalating the number of violent and sexual crimes.
Are we really having a debate about allowing pornography or not in the military bases? Don’t we have more important problems to solve? I think banning pornography in military bases will just make the situation go worst. I mean, porn is so accessible nowadays, if there’s a link between pornography and sexual crimes we have to solve the core of that problem and banning pornography won’t help.
I just feel we try to solve a serious and complex problem (sexual crimes in military bases) with a simple and ineffective solution that can possibly bring negative consequences. The problem is much more complex than that…
These people go to war, have a dangerous job and are away from their family sometimes for long period, can’t they have a little treat sometimes?
Anyway, another example of a complex problem “solved” with restrictive measures that will have absolutely not effect.
Well, you can find out by having a look at the ranking of your country in the Global Peace Index. What is the global piece index? Well, as the site describe it, it is a ground-breaking milestone in the study of peace. It is an index that ranks the nations of the world by their peacefulness and identifies some of the drivers of that peace. In case you don’t want to read further and you are only interested in the ranking of the United States, they are ranked 97 out of 140.
I had a look at the expert panel and I must say it looks like a pretty diversified panel and this way the index can be seen as something reliable. You know, it’s not twelve experts from the United States or Australia who would rank their country first even if not the case. Also, you might wonder what are the indicators of peace, well here they are:
The Global Peace Index is intended as a review of the state of peace in nations over the past year, although many indicators are based on available data from the last two years. The advisory panel decided against including data reflecting a country’s longer-term historical experience of domestic and international conflict on the grounds that the GPI uses authoritative statistics on ongoing civil and trans-national wars collated by institutes such as the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo. These, combined with two indicators scored by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s analysts, comprise five of the 24 indicators.
Number of external and internal conflicts fought: 2001-06
Estimated number of deaths from organised conflict (external)
Number of deaths from organised conflict (internal)
Level of organised conflict (internal)
Relations with neighbouring countries
Measures of societal safety and security
Ten of the indicators assess the levels of safety and security in a society (country), ranging from the level of distrust in other citizens, to the level of respect for human rights and the rate of homicides and violent crimes. Crime data is from the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Five of these indicators have been scored by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s team of country analysts.
Level of distrust in other citizens
Number of displaced people as a percentage of the population
Political instability
Level of disrespect for human rights (Political Terror Scale)
Potential for terrorist acts
Number of homicides per 100,000 people
Level of violent crime
Likelihood of violent demonstrations
Number of jailed population per 100,000 people
Number of internal security officers and police per 100,000 people
Measures of militarization
Nine of the indicators are related to a country’s military build-up - reflecting the assertion that the level of militarization and access to weapons is directly linked to how at peace a country feels internationally. Comparable data are readily available from sources such as the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS).
Military expenditure as a percentage of GDP
Number of armed services personnel per 100,000 people
Volume of transfers (imports) of major conventional weapons per 100,000 people
Volume of transfers (exports) of major conventional weapons per 100,000 people
UN Deployments 2007-08 (percentage of total armed forces)
Non-UN Deployments 2007-08 (percentage of total armed forces)
Aggregate number of heavy weapons per 100,000 people
Wow, now it’s time to wake up. In this article from The Telegraph, we learn that Prince Charles said a £15 billion annual programme was required to halt deforestation or the world would have to live with the dire consequences. He also said the following:
We will end up seeing more drought and starvation on a grand scale. Weather patterns will become even more terrifying and there will be less and less rainfall.
We are asking for something pretty dreadful unless we really understand the issues now and [the] urgency of them.
Ok, this is something we are all aware of. Why wake up 18 months before?
Here are some other interesting quotes in the article:
He said that every year, 20 million hectares of forest – equivalent to the area of England, Wales and Scotland – were destroyed and called for a “gigantic partnership” of governments, businesses and consumers to slow it down.
“What we have got to do is try to ensure that these forests are more valuable alive than dead. At the moment, there is more value in them being dead,” he said.
He estimated that the cost would be about £15 billion a year but said that this should be viewed as an insurance policy for the whole world. “That is roughly just under one per cent of all the insurance premiums paid in the world in any one year. It is an insurance premium to ensure the world has some rainfall and reasonable weather patterns. It is a good deal.”
This is no news to me and I’m sure this no news to you either. We are all aware of the climate changes and that we must act quickly! Why this sudden rush from the Prince Charles? I guess this has a lot more impact when you say 18 months than when you say it’s 5-10 years away like we’ve been saying for the past decade. At least someone in the political sphere is spreading the word…One question we may ask is: even if he’s “Prince Charles”, does he really have influence on important political decisions? I don’t think so unfortunately. But anyway, that’s a step forward, he certainly has more influence than you and me!
The last time I posted a video about 9/11 conspiracy theory, it brought a lot of controversy among DCS readers and I must admit I liked it. So I’m going with one more well made 9/11 video. This is a 20 minutes video supporting the 9/11 conspiracy theory and I’m not commenting on it, you make your own opinion on that one. I just enjoy getting your opinions on this interesting subject and 9/11 always bring interesting conversations.
I recently experimented with the developer framework offered by Facebook to create Facebook applications. That simply means I experimented and tried to create simple Facebook applications just for fun, nothing that would actually go public. I must say I’m extremely disappointed by the framework offered by Facebook as it’s a total piece of junk if you compare to what Google offers for iGoogle/OpenSocial for example. Anyway, that’s not the point of the article, I know there’s a lot of people that are actually thinking right now: “What the hell is he talking about?”. Let’s get to the real deal, your privacy.
You have to understand that everytime you add a new Facebook application to your profile, this application is not running on Facebook’s servers, it is running on a third party server. One could be running from Daily Common Sense for example. This means that Facebook has absolutely no control over what you do as a third party with the information you collect. Every Facebook application has access to your profile’s information and all your friends’ information. Of course, when you sign up as a developper, you agree to the terms of service that states you are only allowed to store the “profile id” of a person and nothing more. Ok, that’s fair, I mean there’s nothing I can do with your profile id. The only problem is that as a developper, if you install my application, I have access to a lot more than your profile id! I can store whatever information I want from you in my own personal database without you or Facebook noticing. Oh sure, I’m violating the terms of service…So what? Nobody knows I’m doing it!
While the information on your profile is not enough to steal your identity, it is quite easy to sell that information and god knows what happen next. I tried with my personal profile and I was able to get quite a lot of information…And store it.
I don’t want everyone to stop using Facebook, I just want you to be careful with the information you put available on there. Remember that I may be an honest developer and you can be sure that if I someday release a Facebook application I won’t be storing personal informations, but can you assume every developer is honest?
Here’s an interesting social experiment a friend of mine pointed out to me today. It’s quite new and in fact I think it’s not even indexed in Google yet, but it’s definitely interesting. It’s called wixist and the goal if the website is stated as follows:
wixist is a social experiment to find out what’s missing in our lives, in 50 characters. What is it for you? Is it love, sex or would you kill for strawberry Coke if it existed? Would a new feature in Microsoft Excel made your life easier today? That’s what wixist want to know: everything you’re missing in your everyday life and everything you wish existed. It’s plain simple, write it down in the box above and submit it. It’s anonymous and purely done as a social experiment.
I think it’s funny just to see what will come out of this project, so give it a try!
I will always be amazed by the creativity of some projects on the Internet and also by the fact that these projects do work! One of them is freerice.com and the idea is quite simple:
FreeRice has two goals:
Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.
This is made possible by the sponsors who advertise on this site.
Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your vocabulary can improve your life. It is a great investment in yourself.
Perhaps even greater is the investment your donated rice makes in hungry human beings, enabling them to function and be productive. Somewhere in the world, a person is eating rice that you helped provide. Thank you.
So it’s fairly simple, you have the main page where you try to find the meaning of certain words and for every correct answer, you donate 20 grains of rice through the UN World Food Program. So why don’t they just give all the rice now? Well, advertisers on the website pay for the rice, so these advertisers need a certain form of exposure. The vocabulary thing is just a way of keeping you on the website so you are exposed to more ads!
Anyway, this is a creative way of helping the world from the comfort of your home so give it a try!
A quick post to let you know I’ve created a new Facebook account for Daily Common Sense and also a “2012 is a hoax” group I would like to make popular.
I was thinking about that today. The fact that we say access to information is a lot more easier now than it used to be. With television, newspapers and Internet, you have a constant feed of information and you don’t even have to make an effort. We say it’s good. You know, more information, more education, better population, better jobs, etc. I’m not convinced.
Honestly, before today I thought the Internet, television and all other modern communication mediums were all in the best interest of the population. I stopped for a couple of minutes and really thought about it. A hundred years ago, when you had a problem, you had to read a book and really investigate on the subject. People writing books were people with a certain level of education, which means you could always hope for a certain level of quality. Books were the knowledge. Of course, not many people had access to school and education wasn’t really that important at the time so it didn’t really matter for most of the population. It was some sort of elite population.: that 1% that could afford going to school and saw the interest of it.
So what is it today? Everybody has access to information but still it doesn’t change. There’s so many crap on the Internet and on T.V. that there’s still a huge lack of good information. So much misinformation is going on and it scares me because we’re not necessarily further than we were 100 years ago. The only difference is that everybody think they hold the truth. Everybody’s an expert today. You know, “I’ve read that on the Internet”, “I’ve watched that show”, etc. Everybody holds the truth and everybody fights for it, not really knowing why, just because they’ve read it somewhere.
100 years ago, you had that 1% of population taking important decisions. Today, you still have 1% of the population or even less taking the decisions, but 85% think they can do better. Because you know, they’ve read about it on the internet.
I’m not saying there’s 85% dumb people and 1% elite people. I’m more going against “false experts”. It’s not because you read something on the web or watch a t.v. show that what you read/see is absolute truth. Easier access to information is good, but it also brings easier access to misinformation. Unfortunately, misinformation is more accessible.
Let’s make it a positive post and says that overall I think we win. But you have to choose between access to information and access to misinformation.
There really is a fine line between being open minded and believing everything you hear. One of the most common argument you will hear is: “Open your mind!”, “It’s not because you don’t see it it doesn’t exist”, etc, etc. I’m sure you have more in head but it mostly comes down to that.
So, are we just a bunch of close minded ignorants? What is the limit of being open minded? Where does it start to be ridiculous? I think there’s no way to tell unfortunately. Sometimes you’ll end up being too much open minded which eventually lead to you being wrong because what you believe in doesn’t make sense. Sometimes you’ll end up being too much close minded and you live in your own little world and have a very limited perception of reality.
I think we should use that argument with care because being open minded is not a sign of intelligence or holding the truth. It can be a sign of weakness. On the other side, a well informed open minded person is a strong person with convictions but still opened to other’s opinions.
I think it’s important to clear that open minded thing because especially with conspiracy theorists, that argument is going to be used a lot. Remember, being open minded is not a sign if intelligence, it can even be a sign of weakness. It is important to be open minded as it’s how we share opinions, but it doesn’t hurt to limit your open mindness so you keep a close contact with reality.
As the closing line, stay open minded but don’t abuse the concept: It doesn’t mean believe in everything you hear. It means respect people for what they think. It’s not because someone doesn’t share the same opinions that you’re open minded and he’s not, or the opposite.
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Computer engineering student, web developer and Web strategist, 
