Today's Revelation

Just watching a war movie and it got me wondering what is the purpose of the Geneva Conventions, which, I see by reading them, were violated during the George Bush era by the United States and no doubt are violated by any country anytime it’s deemed expeditious to do so. 

  They can’t exist out of concern for the welfare of captured soldiers because if the “powers that be” actually cared about soldiers, they wouldn’t have wars in the first place and then enlist those with the least stake in the outcome to kill and die in them.   Clearing away that advertised purpose left the true purpose  obvious.  It’s a military recruiting tool making it a little easier to swallow going out to kill or be killed if you think at least you won’t get tortured or you’ll get kind treatment once you’re blown apart.   Kind of a warm fuzzy from the big shots.  Makes war a civilized endeavor.  Heck.  If there's rules, how bad can it be?

Accidentally exposed to "The News" tonight where I heard more about the Boston Marathon Terrorist Attack.  I'm still waiting to hear someone report on the Baghdad Terrorist Attack  that killed thousands and probably caused the one in Boston.  Oh, I just remembered.  When countries do it, it's foreign policy.  

Only Humans Think Einstein was Smart

Being Easter Sunday, it’s time for me to lay to rest the idea that manmade machines may develop artificial intelligence.    Have you ever watched Fox News?  We’re not even intelligent.  By what wild stretch of the imagination are we to imbue intelligence upon a mechanical device?   Without it ourselves, we wouldn’t recognize it if it happened.

 What wits we do display evolved as a survival tool.  Humans need a hub to delegate physical responses to sensory stimuli.  That’s our brain, our self, our consciousness.  Computers have no mechanism at their disposal such as natural selection to achieve  that.  Necessity is the mother of invention and, as programmed responses to electric input, they have no need.

Google as artificial intelligence:   Based on word association, Google is used by many people as additional brain space, like adding memory.  That doesn’t make Google conscious.  It makes us less conscious.  So perhaps one day we will have achieved parity with machines by attrition.  

As a point of interest, Niagara Bottled Water just re-upped their deal to take a half million to a million gallons a day from the aquifer near Apopka.  Yet ouc plans to send  processed waste into our homes to help the aquifer.  Is there something wrong with this picture?

Move Over Fido

In an uncharacteristic attempt at humor the Orlando Utilities Commission(the polluting one) recently reminded customers of its ongoing and heroic efforts to safeguard our environment.  Coming from the visionaries who abandoned natural gas to build the coal burning (touted as ‘state of the art’ but considered obsolete as soon as it was completed)Curtis Stanton power plant as the rest of the country turned the other way, the hilarity was not lost on me when I got this notification with my bill.   But my laughter was short lived as the purpose of the reminder was revealed:   soon we will be drinking out of each others’ toilets and paying extra for the privilege.   They’re already doing it in Pinellas County and when you take a drink there, it tastes like it.

Of course they didn’t actually write that we will be drinking each others’ processed urine and showering in it and washing our dishes and hands in it.  Nope.   According to what I read, they’re just rescuing our water supply by giving us processed sewage in our pipes.  Call me cynical but I see a connection here to the  St. Johns River Water Management District, another  arm of the development community masquerading as a conservation agency:   Their mission statement is “to find water for development.”    When water restrictions go into place during a drought, these restrictions are considered “found water”  to justify further cramming in of people.   I believe our drinking sewage will be considered a giant pool of “found water” and another  boon to the building industry.

At present we don’t need to drink sewage so why should we in the future?  Well, after all that “found water” gets factored in, there will be a lot more people living here.   I think I prefer the old way of “finding water.”

In this way are the standards lowered that we have tried to expect of life.   Much of the “third world” will have drinking water superior to ours.  At least the people there won’t be sipping from their neighbors’ kidneys.