Phil Osborn

Reply to Down and Out in America in Current Events JoeUser Forums

Sorry to hear about your plight. If you do end up sleeping in your vehicle, I suggest strongly that you check to see what the local ordinances are. Here in California, especially the OC, there are a lot of people living out of shopping carts, including entire families, who tried living out of a vehicle - or at least sleeping in one. In most cities hereabout, it's illegal, and the cops will arrest you and then have the vehicle towed. They particularly like to do this on Fridays, as

Why? in Philosophy JoeUser Forums

This line of thinking did not originate with the meeting of Christian Apologetics which I attended recently, but the arguments presented at the meeting were so cogent as to compel me to rethink my own atheistic positions on this issue, something which I have not tried to do for a lot of years. I

In Case of Death, Please Notify in Sex & Romance JoeUser Forums

For background, see my previous coverage in my article "Life goes ON? You're kidding, right?" In brief, for about a year, my life was being trashed (literally, much of the time, as in trash left all over the place) by a little local gang which had moved into the industrial office unit next t

Reply to A three-dimensional political spectrum quiz in Politics JoeUser Forums

Here's mine, which are pretty much what I expected: Rank Item Percent 1: Anarcho-syndicalist (100%) 2: Libertarian (95%) 3: Traditional Societies (78%) 4: Conservative (70%) 5: Liberal (56%) 6: New Labour (55%) 7: Totalitarian (34%) 8: Authoritarian (28%)

Anthony L. Hargis & Co. - A Case Study in the Present Danger in Philosophy JoeUser Forums

Note: (June 25th, 2005) please check the comment section, tenth comment, for Anthony Hargis's response to this article. This link should also take you directly there. Follow-up: January 31st, 2005: Well, now the receiver's office has taken possession of ALH&Co.'s website at <a href

Reply to Why Men? in Pure Technology JoeUser Forums

Thanks. So far as I know, nobody is looking into this, so I figured I ought to bring it up. A couple decades back, I kept telling people that I absolutely refused to believe that most of the DNA was just useless junk, but nobody was looking there because of the common wisdom. Now we know that there are entire unsuspected systems of metaDNA programming that depend upon the short RNAs produced by the "junk." Similarly, W. Donner Denkla gave -

Reply to Why Men? in Pure Technology JoeUser Forums

This is the kind of thing that I wake up thinking in the middle of the night. Usually I forget it, as I'm too lazy to write it down. Anyway, I suspect that genetic modification is out of control, politically, at least long run. For example, since the original work came out publically on the "marathon mice," regarding the muscle growth enhancement via genetic modification, there have been a plethora of news pieces appearing about expected grey/black

Why Men? in Pure Technology JoeUser Forums

So, a woman inherits some nasty genetic defect that blocks production of some key protein. What happens? Typically little or nothing, because that defect is only expressed in 50% of her cells. Most of the time, the same is true for us men. However, if the defect is on the X chromosome, of which (most) women have two copies, but (most) men only have one,

Progress (??) at the Interim Programming Council of KPFK in Politics JoeUser Forums

So, with just the lucky chance of my noticing from my mailing from the Orange County Peace Coalition that the IPC was meeting locally, I drove up to Anaheim after dealing with the gang once again at my storage unit (see my article Life Goes On... .). It took a while fo

Zatoichi - The Blind Swordsman in Art JoeUser Forums

So, obviously I saw the movie, and more or less liked it. Not earthshakingly good, but with a lot of nice moments. I've seen it compared to "Seven Samurai" (7S). Sorry. Go rent the original if you want really dynamite movie viewing. Both films do focus on the day to day, real lives of "ordinary" Japanese people. But, the ordinary people of 7S were d

Reply to Orson Scott Card on liberal media bias in Current Events JoeUser Forums

I've read and enjoyed a lot of sf novels from Orson, who is a devout Mormon, BTW, last I heard. His "Enders Game" is classic for kids or adults, and the series that follows has a lot to recommend it, as well. Altogether a thoughtful and thought provoking author, who enjoys taking on really challenging moral and philosophical issues and does a really good job, generally, in presenting them. (And, I speak as a devout atheist and follower of Ayn Rand.) I suspect, however, re "liberal

All of you are from Manchuria! in International JoeUser Forums

No, we don't - repeat, don't have the technology to do exactly what the movie showed. OK? However, we've been doing essentially the same thing for decades. Try the best-seller "Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." A truly good read, anyway. One of the very rare unique takes on basic questions of philosophy. Pirsig, the author, died a

Life goes ON? You're kidding, right? in Misc JoeUser Forums

August 8, 2004. At the last moment yesterday, I discovered a notice from the Orange County Peace Coalition in my email, mentioning that today there is going to be a meeting of the KPFK/IPC (Interim Pro

Yin Yang Quiet Bang Whisper Scream in Misc JoeUser Forums

Yin Yang Quiet Bang Whisper Scream Mumble Shout "Carburators, man. That's what life is all about" * *from Phantom of the Paradise So, I decided to get a whole lot of work done on the July 4th weekend. Right. The first impediment that I ran into was the fact that I was truly exhausted from the previous week.

What Goes Around in Consumer Issues JoeUser Forums

When I first moved to Long Beach in early '76, the Carter recession was well under way and jobs were scarce. After several simultaneous part-time gigs, I finally went full time as a minimum wage security guard for Fox Security. It was not a bad job, if you didn't consider the pay, anyway. I like to read and my stack of to-be-read books was large then, altho nowhere

A Litany of Gripes in Politics JoeUser Forums

I think if was back in the late '60's that the Reader's Digest published a little economic analysis showing what percentage of the costs of everyday items was taken up by taxes, tariffs, sudsidies, etc., as opposed to the full and complete costs of manufacturing, marketing and delivery to the store shelf. At that time, a loaf of premium bread would typically be on sa

Reply to Come Here to Kill Patents - Right Here! in Politics JoeUser Forums

See the current issue - July 2004, page 44, "If It's Broke, Fix It," by Gary Stix -of Scientific American for another brief review of this problem in the form of a books review of "Innovation and Discontents:...". There are several books coming out right now that take different looks at the problem, but I haven't heard any real solutions yet - just more attempts to make a broken system work. A real solution, I believe, will require something

Come Here to Kill Patents - Right Here! in Politics JoeUser Forums

OK, I've had it with so-called "intellectual property." It's a great idea in principle, but in practice it frankly sucks big time. Please see my "Virtually Real" article for more

Reply to Virtually Real in Politics JoeUser Forums

"Vivid Group's Mandala was fully programmable in every incarnation." "the decision to stop selling the development tool to others" I'm sure that the PC version was fully programmable by Vivid. However, your own statements indicate what I heard directly from Vivid reps repeatedly at many, many digital arts shows: that you were only selling turnkey systems. I'm sorry if I didn't make my own position clear enough. Let me restate for the record. <B

Reply to We bought an "Eye Toy" for the PlayStation2 in Gadgets & Electronics JoeUser Forums

Please see my article on this: Link There was and perhaps is somewhere an actual development kit for the Eyetoy. At least, the Wall Street Journal review some months back said so. But I haven't been able to find it, and Sony doesn't respond to my inquiries, despite their guarantiee to get back within 48 hours. The concept of the Eyetoy and other implementations have been around since th

Virtually Real in Politics JoeUser Forums

The other day, I attended a meeting of young Democrats - as in, early-teen - in order to hear one

How I Stopped Two Wars in International JoeUser Forums

To understand the full context of this piece, you may want to go to my article "Speaking for the Dead." Do a find on "Iran." The Left - and most other political "activists" - like to talk. Ranting is the be-all and end-all, and if it boils down to a competition for a

Reply to Micro-Shells: The next step in Windows customization? in OS Customization JoeUser Forums

I thought that this was originally the direction that MicroSoft was taking Windows, but somewhere along the way they lost it. The B OS that was supposed to have been the next (no pun intended) OS on the Mac partially implemented this kind of possibility as well, by modeling the OS on a database structure. I was pushing for this approach with the Amiga, and the original Amiga OS that got cancelled because of Jack Tramiel's decision to try to kill the A

Reply to Living on the Street in Politics JoeUser Forums

At one point, that I haven't gotten to yet in my article, I was living in my VW van camper with my Amazon parrot for company and driving a cab three nights a week, sometimes four, weekends in Santa Ana. After 8 hours of dealing with drunk Mexicans who spoke no English - but they NEVER ran out on a fare - and a zillion more of them driving cars of their own, also mostly drunk, (and they couldn't drive safely sober in most cases, self-propelled transpor

Reply to A Time to Worry in Politics JoeUser Forums

If there is, would we know about it? My initial scenario was to use it like the E-Meter in Dianetics. My understanding of their usage, is that you are asked a bunch of leading questions while the "auditor" watches the needle on what is basically just a galvanic skin response testor - one piece of a polygraph. Your changes in skin resistance indicate states of conflict or tension. The point is not just to map these conflicts, but to demand that you