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About Shelter Launch by shelterlaunch

Fri, 4 Jan 2013 08:13:49 EST

Shelter Launch is a project to help Animal Shelters and Animal Rescues use their website to help get pets adopted and bring in additional donations.

We strive to accomplish this without the high costs usually associated with creating a quality web site thereby allowing more revenue to be focused internally.

Shelter Launch is able to keep costs down by using developer licenses for different premium themes and plugins on the WordPress Platform.

A website that brings in additional donations and helps pets get to the right families does not have to feel like rocket science to the staff and does not need to cost Shelter or Rescue thousands of dollars.

Hullo by nightmareHarpsichordist

Thu, 4 Nov 2010 17:50:06 EST

I've joined this site.

Yep.

Moved here from dA.

Yep.

Looking to improve, to expand creative talents.

Yep.

I don't post too often, since the scanning process I have is ridiculously complex, which involves a lot of fussing and meddling!

But I'll try to keep it regular.

In the meantime, getting used to the place, seeing whole new vistas opening up in front of me, etc yadda yadda.

The un avoidable future by imageofpix4u

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 11:15:48 EST

To my friends and family. In 2001 It occurred to me that the 31 Billion dollars our government wanted to spend to repair and rebuild the infrastructure of America's school system was a waste of time. I wrote a 60 page paper on the worlds transition into the communications age, from the transportation age. The paper predicted massive changes, like teaching 90% of all kids at home, instead of busing them to central locations. One good teacher could monitor and teach a class of 300 on computer network,,,instead of 30 to a class. The computers would do most of the teaching. Kids with special talents and abilities in area's like math,,,could race ahead through the material to the next step or level or grade. Those slower, could recieve better rudamentry instruction (and assistance from a human teacher when necessary.) Instead of maintaining 300 buildings to teach kids (structure maintenance, electricity, teacher salary land value, etc) would be eliminated by putting 4 year olds in front of "Big Bird " type teachers. WHY? Because education,,,is communication! We are standing at the doorway to the change between transportation,,,and communication ages.

Police won't cruise the streets to look for criminal activity. Camera's,,,some moving along lines like old trolley wires will radio back information to a police station where one operator could see more,,at less cost. Less energy in gas,,less pollution and more effective utilization of resources. Kids won't go to school, because society can't protect them in public schools. The liability is already starting to mount,,and will get worse. Crime, passing of disease, danger from terrorists ,or crazy people. This will not happen because I predict it. It will happen out of human necessity. Right now we are where America was about 1890. Few paved roads, no cars to speak of, and the beginning of the transportation age. The changes brought cars, super highways, high death tolls from cars wrecks, airplanes, and an entirely different society emerged.

A computer today,,,is the equivalent to the book of 100 years ago. Babbots computational engine will change human history, far more than the movable type printing press. All change is difficult. We will most likely see the melting of the poles, floods, another world war and a pandemic or two before we get settled into the communications age. Get ready for mass delivery of goods to your home too. You currently go out to get the elements of life, except water, electrical energy, gas na dof course information. In the future, more efficient grid transports (conveyors,? Air pressured or magnetic levied parts?) will become economic necessitate to humans. You won't go to work,,,it will come to you. Paying for your carbon footprint? And all the world shall be Taxed. Remote medicine? That too has already been done. Even surgical proceedures from the other side of the globe, guided by robotic arms moved by signals of a surgeon. The buggy whip and carriage makers never thought they'd be out of a job. Blacksmiths, and lamp oil lantern manufacturers never saw it coming. Fifth generation type-setters at news papers walked into work one day to discover, that their 200 year old trade craft didn't exist anymore. It could happen to you, and it will probibly happen in your childrens lifetime.

Back in the mid 1970s NASA builft an experimental aircfafr utilizing modern composit materials. It was claimed that the wings would actually bend in a tight turn increasing the angle of attack against the airflow, enabling the craft to make 8G to 10G force turns. Well knowing that was beyond the endurance of human survivability, I predicted in 1976 that tomorrows Aircraft Pilots are down at the Mall playing video games, flying video game airplanes. The prediction came true not because I'm smart, or I 'm a clairvoyant of some type. It came true because an aircraft with superior flight capability, that never gets tired, asks for a raise, or gets sick is much more of a cost effective weapons platform to operate from. Ground field robotics are already in use in both our Afgan and Iraq wars. They roll around like mini tanks on tracked wheels,,,can go farther, see better, and do more to augment a ground soldiers ability to kill the enemy. Besides no congressman has to console a grieving mother or widow at some National Cemetery over the loss of a robot.

Look I'm not an anti-technology type, I like machines that can wash dishes too. Statistics can be used the way a drunken man utilizes a lamp-post. For support,,,,or for illumination. I've heard the nay-sayer, and the "get a horse" mentality before. You can't stop progress. Even when the progress is dehumanizing. The ramifications of the communications and digital age will have a dramatic impact on all human activity, from family structure, how we make wars, how we pray, how we work, and end the end, how we die. I didn't write this to scare the women and children either. Best know your enemy well my friend and be prepared. Please look at this short u-tube post. It has no audio,,,just a set of statistics, that play like a picture slide-show. It is virus free. But it should give an intelligent person time or pause to think. Please read, and think or ponder the ramifications of this information. It may be the smartest 5 minutes you've ever taken in your life. Please pass this along to all your friends. Thanks so much. Love to you all.

Alex Ingram

mysticseeker2@yahoo.com

This is the u tube link,,,down there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLY

Our FUTURE, The Worlds Future. by imageofpix4u

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 11:13:18 EST

I'm writing this blogg page to those of you in Cyber-Space, and perhaps to thousands of others who shall read these words in the future following my life's journeys end. No I hadn't given up ideas of immortality any more than I have conquered all my inner demons, and in doing so give up all vestiges of immorality.

I'm writing this ad-hoc spontaneously in that I do not know how this dissertation will end as I am typing these words at the beginning. To some that might seem like writing without thinking or prepositioning a complete thought. Granted it does make self editing, and coming to the point a bit trickier than say mulling an idea over and over in my mind for a long period. Some writers wake up inspired by a dream and write a novel from the simple spark of an idea from the sub-conscious. I'm inclined to think the sub-conscious is always in the background and influencing that which we write, paint, sing, or draw.

To be sure the non-dominate half of our human brains where the sub-conscious is supposed to reside, also regulates half of our body movements, as well as receiving and processing the tactile sensory information from one half of our bodies. All well proven and documented by medical science and made manifest in stroke patients (or victims) who lose the feeling, and control of half their bodies input and control following a blood clot which blocks a sufficient supply of blood to only half of the brain.

It amazes me sometimes to think of the consequences of such an event personally. Does it wipe clean half your memory or reasoning power? Actually people who have suffered the half paralyzing effects of a stroke do real well. The may lose the ability to make speech if the dominate hemisphere of the brain is the one that is effected. But to say a person thus afflicted has half a heart, or half a brain or half a life would be a false assumption indeed. While half of the physical self may be effected, the body itself remains whole as does an individuals soul, and humanity.

What is the point? Gee I suppose I don't really have one other than to say every day I marvel at the state of the human condition. I'm sitting here at the computer writing when I could be snuggled against the wife in a warm bed. I could be reading some of the new books I received for Christmas. Indeed I started writing this as I was thinking of Stephan Hawking and his book A short History of Time. If you've read the book or understand its scientific implications, combined with the theory's expounded by Einstein, not to mention the recent discoveries about the nature of everything that is and isn't following the Atomic particle research performed at CERN; you get a sudden rush of cosmic awareness. You also have to see the irony and humor behind Mr. Hawkings title to his book, A short history of time. Time is hardly a tangible substance (The Photo- Publication not with standing.) hence time management is an oxymoron at its core. Oh one can shift time about a bit like post dating a check. But this is merely a book keeping effect almost akin to high speed photograph where we change our relative perspective and view of a momentary fragment of an event in time. Being an immortal would render time into an irrelevant element of the repetitive cycles of the Universe from which one could not escape. Worse still would to be an immortal with a perfect memory for detail. One would have terribly out-dated stories that would be lost to the moment at hand. Besides which it'd make you a terrible bore, even if you were a history teacher. Time will never be a marketable or tangible entity, until one can go out and buy a liter or two of it, take it home and pour it into your clock or calendar. Even the vast Universe itself keeps imperfect time, just as men are fallible and keep imperfect dreams and ideas.

Take for example the Greek Philosopher Aristophanes, who was born in 450 BC. and lived to be sixty five. He was given credit for the quote "The Poet was right: can't live with them, or without them." Of course he was referring to women and the Poet he refers to may have live a generation or two before him. A good truth or joke can be almost immortal to the human condition. A contemporary of Aristophanes , a fellow named Herodotus (485-425 B.C. started this peculiar habit of listing the magic number seven in regards to the wonders of the world. No matter the seven being man made wonders, or natural wonders, whether real or from fictional accounts ( Ancient Urban Legions) Humans still persist in making the habit of listing the list of the most, greatest, best, biggest etc. You think I'm kidding. Google, "The seven best receipts of all time, the Seven biggest Myths of all time, the seven wonders of the ancient world, the seven modern wonders (man made) of the world, etc ad-nauseatus (L). What we write of our perspective of an event in time, if consistently true of the human state, may out-live us as truthful clichs and hence we might find our names in the Bartletts Book of Familiar Quotations. One might even be remembered for bastardizing one such quote into his own application (see the term Ingramaticasm in old Oxford Tomb like multi-volume dictionaries.)

Example "Be wary of Greeks Bearing Trojans." translated in modern verse as "Don't drop your car keys after dark in San Francisco."

I discovered that our English Language all started as a branch of High German, Frisian, and Ingwainian on the Juteland Peninsula during the dark ages. ING was a Norse Sea God, and the Jutes, Angloes, Frisians, as well as the Saxons were all "friends of, or worshipers of ING. So all words and text and ideas worthy of study, from poetry to Treaty that encompass all custom and law and faith are all smeared across the ancient time line from 10,000 BC to the modern day and are evolving every day. Sadly a latino-ebonic urban contemporary sludge of mixed languages may one day be a common human language. History records a language that was a mixture of Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Latin, Italian and Moorish being spoken in the market place by International traders who plied their goods around the Mediterranean ports. Language, like perspectives, religions, and time all seem to share a certain fluidity in common. These things seem to be flexible when it is necessary for commerce, or survival or for arriving at a comfortable understanding (either philosophic or religious) of who and what and why everything is. So many doctors, so few healers. So many intellectuals, and yet so few really wise people; So many laws and so little Justice: So many mysteries with to many explanations.

Time,,,,is it just a book we read to kill time, while in fact Time is really just killing us instead. Is Time just an illusion created locally but exported dimensionally by the manufacturers of space? These questions are like everything else, relevant to your belief, your faith, your educational and your ability to wrap your mind around all these concepts while still retaining a sense of sanity. I dare say a good number of us are just worrying how we will pay off Christmas celebrations and or where the next mortgage payment will come from. Considering the number of people going hungry in the world, the number of people living in slavery to others by force or by a structured rule of law, the relevance of our origins, or the nature of reality is a meal for the palate of over fed intellectuals. To the majority of the world, the substance of that which is real , substantial versus temporal or imagined, is restricted to food and water in a daily fight for survival. Yet still the human spirit soars and even in the simplistic cultures, and the most severe levels of poverty, it is the wonderment of the value of such un substantial things like, love, or hopes and dreams. There are few who hold onto hope as tightly as do the unfortunate who suffer from poverty, or a shortened life.

In the end the Universe remains little more or less than what we think it to be based on our thoughts. What is the Universe and the nature of life to a dead person? Well according to all our hopes they are immortal and infinite regards based on where Our souls will reside, and whether or not our souls which come from the infinite will in fact return to such a state. Hence the relevance of faith. Will science or religion ever answer all those questions? I'm literally dyeing to find out however it is proving to be a life long endeavor indeed. I suppose we should all be thankful for every thing that we have, every thing that is and isn't, everything that will and will not be,,,,wait a minute,,,,these sound like lyrics in a Pink Floyd Album! (Oh no! I've slipped through the time flow continuum or I'm having a flashback from the 1960s.)

OK, well so much for grander thinking, and of lesser expressions of mortal men made in writ for the ages of sages to endure. Lets just sleep on it till New Years. Some say the world will come to an end in 2010. One thing is certain. That 2009 will be history before you know it.

Auld Lang Sang by markulyseas

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 05:41:57 EST

Or, Yet Another Year of Living Foolishly

Sections of this article appeared in my previous column, Paradox in Paradise, in The Bali Times, December 2007. Two years down the line one wonders if anything has changed in the world.

This year is in its last days and then hope will begin for the New Year. So what will it be? More wars? Genocide? Child abuse? Women beating? Extinction of another species? Theres so much to choose from. Its like a supermarket out there with all kinds of manmade disasters available on the shelves, one has simply to reach out and grab one.

2009 is ending on a note of promise with the climate change conference in Copenhagen. What happened to the good old days when we used a blanket instead of a heater? All this talk of saving the world is pointless. Everything is done half-heartedly. Lets make a resolution for the New Year to decimate the planet. Destroy all our natural resources, pollute the rivers and farm the seas to extinction. At least we would be doing one thing properly.

On one hand we talk of peace, love and no war. On the other hand we bomb, rape, pillage, annex and subdue nations with our money power. So what will it be, folks?

Anyone for a second helping of torture?

For instance, lets take a quick look at Afghanistan. The British couldnt control the tribes in the 19^th century, the Russians failed miserably and the American soldiers with their assorted comrades in arms, poor souls, are dying by the dozen. I suppose life is cheaper by the dozen. Hasnt anyone got a clue about what the Afghans want? Could it be conceivable that all they want is to be left in peace to manage their own country the way they think fit?

And what about certain parts of the Middle East? Do you think they will run out of people considering the number of killings that are taking place? Education there is history like the death of a six year old killed by a stray bullet. It stems from the barrel of a gun. The pen is for signing death certificates.

Finally we come to the mother of them all, Iraq. The cradle of civilisation is now a cemetery of lost souls. Violence has become synonymous with breakfast, lunch and dinner. So how many died in car bombs today ladies and gentlemen and while youre about it please pass the apple pie, said Tiffany at breakfast.

Statistics are essential in war zones. They can always be rearranged to suit ones perceived objectives. The little numbers represent people; mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, relatives and friends. A neat way to manage these numbers is to write in pencil so that an eraser can be used judiciously.

And while the dead toll in war ravaged countries rise, the world peeps behind the blood stained bamboo curtain (Myanmar) watching helplessly as unarmed monks are shot in the streets to the chorus of voices threatening Iran not to go ahead with its nuclear program while at the same time patting China on the back for annexing Tibet and deliberately dismantling its culture.

Africa, the Dark Continent, what can one say about its peoples and their ancient civilizations that have slowly been corrupted by large corporations and foreign governments meddling in the affairs of the states: Buying and selling governments on mammoth proportions? Oh for the days of Idi Amin. Remember Entebbe and the blood baths? Everything is so quiet now, no excitement and drama except for piracy off the coast of Somalia. I suppose people are so hungry that they dont have the strength to either raise their voice or a gun.

What about the sub-continent, India? Do they still abort female foetuses? Burn women who dont bring enough dowry? Continue to kill tigers for their body parts to be used in aphrodisiacs? And are citizens still dying needlessly at the hands of terrorists because their government has failed to protect them?

Forgive me, I missed that little country to the west of India; Pakistan. Poor chaps theyve had such a tiresome year with the constant ebb and flow of political violence and religious fundamentalism peppered with suicide bombers that probably the common folk want to migrate to India cant really blame them. All they desire is to live in peace to pray, work and procreate.

Now lets see who is left on the black board? HmmmChavez seems to be doing pretty well for himself. And what about Brazilians who are fighting a losing battle with the powers that be to stop the plunder of the Amazon rainforest, the green lung of mother earth? South America appears to be lost in translation. We never seem to get a lot of news from there except for soccer, drug lords and Armageddon in 2012.

Lets leave all this violence for some whale steaks. The Japanese are so considerate to the world at large. For a country that prides itself on rejecting nuclear weapons it has a rather odd way of showing its respect for the environment. I am referring to the mass killing of whales for scientific purposes. Actually you must admire their concern. Ever considered the fact that they maybe ridding the oceans of monsters that take up so much space and are a serious health hazard to humanity?

I think Japans neighbour China has the right approach. If any land is required for development in that country, bulldozers move in to clear out the poor people living on the land. This is good as it saves on court cases and pointless arguments on human rights.

There are many countries that lecture China on its Human Rights. Wonder who has a perfect track record? The worlds last Superpower? A superpower that continues to interfere in the affairs of other nations at times actually sending troops and bombing unarmed civilians along with perceived enemies of the State?

I suppose the term collateral damage is more palatable than the word murder.

Civil liberties are essential for the survival of a nation and so is the health of its people. In some areas of society where commonsense has been the victim, Nature has found a way of retaliating by inventing diseases like Swine Flu, infecting millions and helping to keep the population in check.

And once again as we have done in the past this Christmas and New Year we shall all sit down to sumptuous meals, drink whatever fancies our taste buds, shop till we drop and pamper our overweight children and pets. Its the season of happiness, love and family especially for the homeless on the streets of New York, injured Iraqi children in hospitals, missing women in Afghanistan, asylum seekers, political detainees and the fringe folk of the planet. They will surely be very happy and content with what they see, hear, feel and touch this festive season.

From democracy to environmental disasters it has been a roller coaster ride through many countries and peoples and cultures and religions. This journey will end only when we truly comprehend the reason as to why we have been put on this planet by a power far greater than we can ever imagine.

Merry Christmas and a peaceful New Year from Bali

Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om

Posted in Auld Lang Sang