A new energy drink called Blow is now on the market. The name Blow is actually the street name for cocaine and the marketing package contains a vial full of powder, a credit card and a mirror. Just like if you were buying cocaine off the street, but instead you have to dilute it in water.

Honestly, how many people are going to try to snort it? I bet a lot, which is not a very good idea.

How far can marketing go? I honestly don’t mind because Blow won’t make me a cocaine addict and I also don’t like energy drinks. I prefer sticking to the good old coffee. I just think selling a product with the drug industry in mind isn’t really an acceptable way of selling a product. I’m not going through the debate of is it going to create cocaine addict, I’m more going with the debate of is Blow using an acceptable marketing tactic? It’s going to work obviously, but in my opinion products like Blow should never get on the shelves. This is because you can be 10 years old and buy it. It’s not like a similar campaign would be for an alcoholic beverage and would target people over 18 or 21 years old. In that situation that would be more reasonable, but for a product anyone can buy I think it’s going too far. Anyway, that’s for you to judge and here’s a short video about Blow:

Thought your cell phone number was private? Thought the advantage of having a cell phone is that you give the number to who you want and avoid unwanted calls? Well I’m glad to inform you that it’s not the case anymore. A company called Intelius has an online cell phone directory of 90 million numbers.

When did you give your consent for your phone number to be published in the cell phone directory? Oh, well you didn’t. The company gather it’s information from public sources like property records and sweepstakes list.

Where will it stop? I mean, please leave us alone! I honestly really like my privacy and hate telemarketing calls. There’s also some people I don’t give my cell phone number intentionally. You pretend you don’t have a cell phone so your boss can’t call you when you’re not home? Well, you can’t hide anymore. I think we’re going too far and we have to draw a certain line. I can’t imagine the time when I’ll receive a telemarketing call while I’m enjoying a meal at the restaurant and forgot to turn my cellphone off. It’s so easy to say to a friend you’ll call back, but getting rid of a telemarketer is not that easy.

So you want to get out of the cell phone directory? It’s not that easy unfortunately. To opt out you have to provide a whole lot of paperwork like copies of driver license and stuff. This is mainly to avoid people to opt out. Shouldn’t it be the opposite? Like you opt in if you want? Why would you have to fight to get out of something you never approved to be in?

I’m curious to know how they got all that information. Of course from public sources, but could it be illegal? It all depends if it was legal for the companies to provide your information, which is usually not the case. When you give out your details, there’s usually a privacy agreement saying they have to keep your information private. Of course, there’s alway ways of playing with the laws and that’s probably what happened.

I just think it’s nonsense. It should be on a volunteer basis. If you don’t mind having your number in the directory, then give your consent and end of the story. If you don’t want well it’s not in, simple as that! I don’t like that cell phone directory idea. It can be a really good thing but it has to be controlled and it has to be a personal decision to be in or not.

Leave us alone.

I came across a post on a forum that really made me laugh, but troubled me at the same time. Here’s the post:

“Need help creating my own society

I’m not declaring my self supreme ruler of said society, but I want to at least have the majority of the say in what goes on.
Where should I set up? Should I have any form of currency (i.e. soap chips and toilet paper)? Do I involve the Galactic Federation?
I need help, being that this will be my first time.”

Reference to the Galactic Federation completely removed any credibility to that post already without any credibility. But the juiciest bits of that post are actually other people’s answers.

“Hmmmm….that’s a good question.

Although I work under the “auspices” of the Galactic Federation, they have never provided me with logistical support of any kind.

Currency is not really necessary, but it’s useful if you’re independently wealthy, as you won’t be given an “expense budget” for your work, if you catch my drift.”

Although I work under the auspices of the Galactic Federation, they have never provided me with logistical support of any kind. What is that? Worked under the auspices of the Galactic Federation? Please. Of course they never provided you with logistical support of any kind, it doesn’t exist!

And the post follow its incoherence with that:

“Your society will manifest when you increase your vibratory rate. It is not in this paradigm. We are not in 3-D, we are in the confused state of 4-D. Your utopia is in 5-D. What you are seeking is also seeking you.”

I refuse to comment.

And it ends with:

“Just how big is your bunker?
I’m seriously considering expanding, or going out to the middle of the desert, one of the two.”

I thinks it’s funny and troubling. Funny because it doesn’t make sense and troubling because there’s persons so serious about these things.

I’m using Facebook just like another 62 million people. It’s really a nice technology and a good way to get in touch with your friends and people you haven’t seen for quite a while, but I use it with great care. Facebook is a huge personal information database, nothing else. Of course there’s a privacy agreement you accept with Facebook meaning they can’t disclose your personal details and informations, but it’s not that rock solid:

“Facebook may use information in your profile without identifying you as an individual to third parties. We do this for purposes such as aggregating how many people in a network like a band or movie and personalizing advertisements and promotions so that we can provide you Facebook. We believe this benefits you. You can know more about the world around you and, where there are advertisements, they’re more likely to be interesting to you. For example, if you put a favorite movie in your profile, we might serve you an advertisement highlighting a screening of a similar one in your town. But we don’t tell the movie company who you are.”

“We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services, Facebook Platform developers and other users of Facebook, to supplement your profile. Where such information is used, we generally allow you to specify in your privacy settings that you do not want this to be done or to take other actions that limit the connection of this information to your profile (e.g., removing photo tag links).”

“We do not provide contact information to third party marketers without your permission. We share your information with third parties only in limited circumstances where we believe such sharing is 1) reasonably necessary to offer the service, 2) legally required or, 3) permitted by you.”

As you can see, the Facebook policy you accept is opened to personal information sharing. We can read that Facebook don’t provide contact details to third party marketers without your permission, but the reality is that often the default options are set to allow the sharing of your profile’s details. Most people don’t know they have to remove the option in their profile manually. You also agree to receive targeted Ads corresponding to your profile.

One thing I don’t like about the term of service agreement is that particular sentence:

“We share your information with third parties only in limited circumstances where we believe such sharing is 1) reasonably necessary to offer the service [...]“

What’s the notion of “reasonably necessary? reasonably can be quite questionable and my notion of what’s reasonable ain’t probably the same as Facebook.

The whole lesson to learn about this Facebook personal information sharing is that most people profiles are gold mines for advertisers and governments. It’s a personal information database people are creating themselves having fun! I bet there’s a lot of people ready to pay for that database. Imagine: on most profiles we find pictures, what you like (movies, drinks, interests, music, etc.), your friends, your age, sex, date of birth, marital status, political views, school attending, work place and there’s many more. I can think of million and million of companies or even governments that would be more than happy to get that valuable database. Even though Facebook is not disclosing too much information at the moment, we can bet money will do it’s dirty job and make your information available to more and more people. Be careful with what you put on your profile as it can one day get in the hands of people you don’t want.

There’s not just the personal information’s selling that matter: Facebook is a computer software and computer softwares are open to hacking as usual. You never know what can happen with that database.

Continue to use Facebook, it can be really nice but just remember that what you put on there can fall into hands you might not want…

There’s nothing I can say about it other that it’s really sad. Here’s a video from youtube where a journalist is asking people in the street what country the United States should invade next. First, the question doesn’t make sense at all and that was the whole purpose. To my not so great surprise people answered with not so great intelligence. Watch the video it’s worth it:

That’s really sad. They wrote the name of the country over Australia and people are all pointing there without asking questions. I mean they’re pointing countries like France and Korea which are definitely not in that area! I feel like I could bash on this video for ages, pointing a lot of things but I think you can figure everything out: Education is the key.

I just can’t believe what I’m reading sometimes. I have no problem with people having different opinions than me, that’s mostly why human relations are made of: disagreement and discussion. If everybody would think the same thing, our world would be kind of boring. The problem is when people are giving false information to prove their point. I usually avoid speaking when I don’t know what I’m talking about or if I don’t have valid arguments to prove my point. But it seems some just don’t care about that, they’re just so much convinced of their beliefs that they’ll twist the information to fit their way of thinking. My latest finding comes from India Daily, once again and here’s the short article:

According to some scientists, there is a reactor at the very center of the earth. That creates the electromagnetism for the earth. The electromagnetism in turn support life forms.

There are evidences that the Mars was timing with life forms. Something weird happened there and the life as we know vanished from the Mars surface. According to some scientists, Mars lost its electromagnetism as its core cooled down.

The Mayans and other civilization have warned the world that some cataclysmic will happen between 2012 and 2025. What did they mean? Was it that the earth’s core will cool down like that of Mars? Does that mean earth will be lifeless like Mars?

The same scientists that say there is a reactor at the very center of the earth, also say the reactor is running out of Uranium fuel. It is possible that it will run out of fuel between 2012 and 2025.

See how this article is built? Propaganda at it’s best. Look at the first sentence:

According to some scientists, there is a reactor at the very center of the earth. That creates the electromagnetism for the earth. The electromagnetism in turn support life forms.

Do you see any reference to where that information is coming from? No source article or anything. You know why? Because there’s none.

Then, we read:

The same scientists that say there is a reactor at the very center of the earth, also say the reactor is running out of Uranium fuel. It is possible that it will run out of fuel between 2012 and 2025.

I know what scientist he’s referring to: Geophysicist J. Marvin Herndon. He’s the author of a theory that wants the core of the earth to be made of Uranium instead of Iron. Iron has been the main theory for years and mostly everyone was believing it was right, including the NASA. It’s totally true that Herndon claims that if made of Uranium, the core will someday exhaust its supply of radioactive material.

The way it’s put in the article is very confusing because it’s put in there like a fact. It seems a fact that the earth’s core is made of Uranium, while it’s mostly approved by most scientists that it is made of Iron. Then it says the core will exhaust its supply of radioactive material between 2012 and 2025. Herndon has never mentioned such date, he’s a scientist not a prophet.

Then why putting exact dates in the article? Well, to back the 2012 end of the world theory. But see how it’s been modified a bit? It’s not an absolute 2012 now, it will happen between 2012 and 2025! It has been changed to be more credible but to follow what the Mayas said, their calendar is ending in 2012, there’s no 2025. I mean it’s all or nothing here, please. 2012 or 2025? 2019 maybe?

It was just to show how such a small article could be full of content. Full of false content. I’m really sick of all that disinformation because there’s a lot of people that probably read the article and took it for granted without even searching for reliable sources of information. I wouldn’t care if the article was making reference to real facts. That would have been just a different opinion.

It’s in the best interest of our society to inform people properly.

I think an important thing in life is to remain rational and not being caught in all sorts of fear/war/whatever propaganda. The key to that is being able to detect propaganda. In fact, I’m amazed that propaganda still works really good in today’s world because access to information is so much easy. Access to information and education is key to eliminate propaganda. Well informed people are less likely to believe things that doesn’t make sense because they can make their own objective opinion from things they’ve read or seen. With Wikipedia and all the information available on the internet these days, you don’t have any excuse anymore to be misinformed.

Wikipedia defines propaganda as follows:

Propaganda is a concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of large numbers of people. Instead of impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense presents information in order to influence its audience.

Propaganda can take the form of, but not limited to, leaflets, posters, TV and radio broadcasts and Internet websites. Any medium that has access to mass population can be used. Propaganda is a very cleaver principle and works mostly by appealing to your emotions while making you believe it is appealing to your reason. In fact, it tries to make people act like animals more than rational, self-thinking persons. The most common form of propaganda is fear propaganda, but there are numerous types. The thing they all have in common is that they are appealing to your emotions and not to your brain. It’s really easy to figure out why it works so well with fear: What’s your reaction when you’re afraid? You’re acting under impulsion and not with your brain; that’s also what animals do. You make people fear something so they approve whatever agenda you may have as long as it resolves the issue. War on terror anyone? Also, what do you do to people not agreeing with you when you’re afraid? You reject them, creating a community of “believers” and clearly separate Good from Bad. Of course you’re always on the good side, never on the bad side. Then you become Self-righteous and the propaganda wheel is in good shape!

So, how to detect it? It’s really simple, when a group of people in charge (Government, at work, school, etc.) tries to justify actions they have intentions to take by appealing to your emotions/feelings, there’s good chance they have a hidden agenda or want to start a propaganda campaign about something. Another good clue is that they won’t make reference to any rational/scientific/proven argument just to make sure you’re not self-thinking. The part where it gets tricky is if arguments are made up to make you believe they’re right. That’s where information and education enter the game. If you’re well informed, you will be able to detect those lies because you can think in a rational way and make links with things you’ve read and experienced.

A good thing can be to observe existing propaganda campaigns and note their similarities. You’ll notice that war, end of the world, UFO, etc. propagandas campaigns all make reference to your most primitive emotions and doesn’t make reference to any scientific/proven/valid arguments. It’s all about emotions and feelings while making you think it’s rational by the ways it’s put!

It’s a very short, straight to the point article about propaganda but I think it’s a good thing to know. Also, if it gave anyone the “drive” to be more informed about their world well it’s a success.

I came across a video on defamer.com where Tom Cruise talks about Scientology and the guy is more crazy than I thought! I won’t comment on it as you really just have to watch it to understand and draw the same conclusions as me: He’s bloody crazy.

Here’s the video: The Tom Cruise Indoctrination Video

Post your comments!

It is definitely a tricky question and guess what? We won’t have the real answer until we’re dead. In fact, it’s quite possible that we never get the answer if there’s nothing after…Because you won’t have the time to notice.

I will not get too much into religious beliefs as it’s usually a never ending story and you can’t really change a religious opinion, it’s usually something you believe really hard into. It’s not bad, it’s great if it gets you going. But if you’re here it’s because you’re having some doubts about what’s after life and thus, not that much convinced about your convictions. Or maybe you’re just curious, who am I to judge?

I’m going to approach this in a way a lot of people may not like, but in a very rational way. I don’t particularly believe that we’ve actually been put on earth by any God and this is mostly because of evolution’s theory. We have so many proofs that more primitives humans existed before us and we simply evolved over time. The first human wasn’t even able to speak but was only able to express basic emotions and produce primitives sounds.

Imagine one of the most primitive man, a Neanderthal man for example:

Can you imagine this man having a life after death? Probably you can’t because he’s too close to the animal kingdom. I mean, what would he do after death? Most people think that after death our soul remain and we keep an eye on our significant others. Doesn’t really make sense for that Neanderthal man I guess.

The popular belief is that animals don’t really have an after death experience, it just stops there because they are animals. Of course there is reincarnation but that’s a different matter. That’s why we don’t feel much pity in mass killing pigs, beefs and all other animals we kill for food; they’re part of the food chain, we’re on top, we go to heaven and they don’t! From that point of view, the Neanderthal man was nothing more than an animal and he was part of the food chain like any other animal.

Now, we are actually an evolution of that man. When did we start to be “eligible” to heaven? I guess as soon as the human got intelligent enough to think on it’s own and started to have feelings for others. Probably when the feeling of loosing someone was starting to be so strong they felt the need to reassure themselves that there was something right after, a place where everyone would meet once this is all over. They felt the need to have an objective in the end, something to strive for, to keep motivated, not to do all this life for nothing.

The reality is that every animal on this planet is living his life for nothing (Assuming there’s nothing after life for animals, as the popular belief wants). In the end they will die, being killed by another animal on top of the food chain. Why do we deserve a special treatment? We don’t deserve one, we’re as much animal as any other animal on this planet…Just a little more intelligent!

You might think I’m being too rational on that one and I totally agree, but it’s not a post about what my heart wants. It’s a post about what my head thinks and it does make a huge difference in the end. I’d really like if there was something after death and I hope there is. It’s quite sad to do all this long run for nothing, and I think it gives something to strive for.

My final thoughts are that we don’t know and I’m not going to play God on this one and say there is or there is nothing after death. It can give you something to keep motivated, something to strive for, but the truth is that you don’t know. Live your life like there was nothing after because we never know!