Take no offence.

"I do not wish to seem overdramatic but I can only conclude from the information that is available to me as Secretary-General that the Members of the United Nations have perhaps ten years left in which to subordinate their ancient quarrels and launch a global partnership to curb the arms race, to improve the human environment, to defuse the population explosion, and to supply the required momentum to development efforts. If such a global partnership is not forged within the next decade, then I very much fear that the problems I have mentioned will have reached such staggering proportions that they will be beyond our capacity to control." A troubled U Thant, whom The New York Times hailed as "this dedicaed man of peace" and who was a licensed "ham" as well as interested in UFOs, wrote this in 1969. If his guess about the timeframe was accurate, time has already run out for mankind. The way things are going lends credence to what he said. The more I think about it, the more inclined I'm to the view that the most important lesson parents can teach their children is not to take offence at the slightest (often imagined) of slights. That may be one little step in curbing the increasingly violent manner in which people respond to almost every event at present. It's no cakewalk to follow this naive advice, though, given that the parents' own upbringing has been in a context of "despise-the-other" and "never trust a stranger". The point is simply this: the root of humanity's problems is human nature. The Stanford Research Institute study funded by the Charles F Kettering Foundation, Changing Images of Man http://digbig.com/4ynew, shrouded in conspiracy theory and mind control rumours ever since, offers the propogation of a safe, officially-approved, neutred, materialistic religion - a sort of a "secular monotheism" - as a probable solution for the future salvation of man. Freemasonary ("true Freemasonary" to be exact) with its "one lodge, the universe - and one brotherhood, everything that exists" and each person having "the 'privilege of labor,' of joining with the 'Great Architect' in building more noble structures and thus serving in the divine plan" has been cited as an example. L Ron Hubbard's Scientology might well be its close running mate. It all smacks of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World to me. By the way, do read Changing Images of Man 2000 here: http://digbig.com/4ynkt.

Inside job?

In most cases, I’m wary of conspiracy theories. http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/06/whats-your-favourite-conspiracy-theory.html. But when a well-known and well respected professor of nuclear physics who ought to know his implosions from his explosions offers a ‘controlled demolition’ hypothesis, I don’t know. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Jones. [Want a quick summary of the top 10 conspiracy theories, go here: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?menuID=1&subID=735. Also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theories.] Urban Indians, Mumbaikars in particular, who take a very sentimental view of all things American staunchly object to the conspiracy theory for the following reason. Would they do it to their own people? Would they make their own folks miserable? Would they attack Truth, Justice and the American Way (what Superman now calls “all that stuff”)? http://trueaspect.blogspot.com/2004/10/truth-justice-and-american-way.html. Of course, they would. If they had a strong enough motive. If they could conjure a neo Pearl Harbour in order to justify a take-over of the Middle East oilfields, for instance. Or, if they could whip up enough popular support for their dream of restoring the US of A to the greatness and world leadership that, in their estimation, it is destined for. To hell with who gets hurt in the process, boys and girls. See how General Motors – which used to be a power unto itself at that point of time – systematically destroyed the California Transit Systems in the forties. http://www.trainweb.org/mts/ctc/ctc06.html. The Prophet of Progress had the best of motives at heart. You guessed it: the profit motive. “Kerosene was poured on the streetcars and electric trains and they were burned, except a few placed in museums. Nothing was left of the transit system which had comprised 1479 streetcars and train cars and 771 trolley buses. Even the subway was made unusable by a future subway line.” Also: “…what was once a private company, making profit and paying taxes, eventually became both government owned and government subsidized, after GM destroyed both its efficiency and its customer base. This process was repeated in other of GM's transit operations in California. The transit companies also had owned much of the property under their tracks, and paid property taxes which roads never paid.” And: “Taxpayers to this day are burdened with subsidizing bus systems. To a much greater extent, they are burdened with subsidizing automobiles whose numbers are far greater than if the electric systems – with streetcars, trains and trolley buses – had remained intact.” Want another example? Read what happened to “the hapless and desperate victims of the Dust Bowl seeking work in California (much like the Joad family in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath attracted to California, portrayed as ‘the land of milk and honey’ in the bogus ads for fruit pickers placed in Oklahoma newspapers in order to drive down the minimum wages)”. http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/06/us-and-them.html.

Okay, everybody. Let's belt it with gusto:

“I like to be in America!
O.K. by me in America!
Ev'rything free in America
For a small fee in America!”

And:

“Automobile in America,
Chromium steel in America,
Wire-spoke wheel in America,
Very big deal in America!”

Moreover:

“Immigrant goes to America,
Many hellos in America;
Nobody knows in America
Puerto Rico's in America!”

Once more with feeling, boys and girls:

“I like the shores of America!
Comfort is yours in America!
Knobs on the doors in America,
Wall-to-wall floors in America!”
http://www.lyricsondemand.com/soundtracks/w/westsidestorylyrics/americalyrics.html.

What’s your favourite conspiracy theory?

Do you believe in conspiracy theories? Like the one that got Mel Gibson into hot waters in Conspiracy Theory? You know, the "there's a big cover-up involving the US Government and a ham-handed, bumbling CIA" sort?

In the fifties and the sixties, there used to be stories that G-Men in Black cropped up out of nowhere every time there was an "incidence" involving UFOs and aliens and muddied the water so much that, in the end, no one knew what had really happened. (In the 1997 hit, Men in Black, Jay/Will Smith and Kay/Tommy Lee Jones had to wield their neuralyzers to deal with the scum of the intergalactic space, remember?) Read the script: http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Men-in-Black.html.

Now let me point you to the once-familiar Internet conspiracy theory with Microsoft as everybody’s favourite villain. At http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/comment/0,5859,2823588,00.html, you'll find a typical conspiracy theory scenario. It's about the control of – no, not intergalactic space – the Internet. The secret weapon – Windows XP and the bundled IE browser – were to be allegedly used by Microsoft in cahoots with the US Government to help it control the distribution of information over the Internet. (Don't forget Congress had by then already given the US Government unlimited electronic surveillance power.) The article, Microsoft: Too much control of the Web?, was written by the well-respected CEO of UserLand Software, Dave Winer, who kept a daily blog, "Scripting News," at http://www.scripting.com/.

News spreads. And how.

The way news – and rumours – spread in the world as we know it always fascinates me. That is why the diagram and the theory about the occurrence of the phenomenon on the Internet (and Blogspace), Stephen Van Dyke’s brainchild, was quite an education for me. http://stephenvandyke.com/2004/03/08/how-news-travels-on-the-internet/ To enjoy the intricacies of the graphic depiction in its full glory, view the big version at http://stephenvandyke.com/images/articles/153-how_news_travels_on_the_internet_infographic.gif. If you’re in a mood for more theory, look at The Blog Epidemic Analyzer (HP Information Dynamics Lab) http://www-idl.hpl.hp.com/blogstuff/index.htmlhttp:/www-idl.hpl.hp.com/blogstuff/index.html. Don’t skip the FAQ at http://www-idl.hpl.hp.com/blogstuff/faq.html#1 particularly #10. Why do bloggers kill kittens? This is a pithy – and witty – explanation of the trajectory of information in Blogspace using the authors’ own experience as an example. Amit Asaravala explains what rhe HP research is all about in his Wired article (Warning: Blogs Can Be Infectious). http://wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,62537,00.html.