More On The Lizard Brain..

Another good post on the lizard brain (for an explanation of the phenomenon see this post) from an entrepreneurial perspective.

It also gives it it's proper medical name, the amygdala, no less. Such a tiny little blob being responsible for such a huge amount of suffering and misery:-(

Thought For The Day No. 30 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste..

The greatest gifts can be destroyed by idleness.

Michel de Montaigne

Death Of A Nation

What I've been watching these last few days - a thorough, maybe largely accurate and often graphic six part documentary about the war in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

It seems naive and crass now but I remember at the time wondering why all of these terrible things seemed to happen in places which had such idyllic, sylvanian looking scenery.

Seems that many people have forgotten about this conflict already, which I think would be a mistake.

Watch it.

This Month's Revolutionary New Concept - Walt Gleeson

Canfield, Proctor, Nightingale, Zagler, Hill, Robbins, Tracy, Winfrey... step aside please..there's a new success guru in town! Walt Gleeson is a highly successful, internationally renowned author of motivational books and CDs and other products. Starting as a rust repairer on a sewage trawler in international waters, on one cent fifty per month, Walt soon rose to control the entire US fleet, and he never even graduated from High School. His career has spanned over half a decade, during which he has acted as advisor to such alumni as Richard Nixon, Oliver North and Mike Tyson, and he has enthralled readers all over the world, from Alaska to Florida and from Hawaii to Rhode Island, with such titles as You Can Do It!, You Can Do It! Too, Literally Make Your House Work For You, My Lai Was Just a Blip and Become a Billionaire Whilst On The Toilet, Walt is the Puumaja Crew's personal realization and fulfilment coach, whatever that is.

This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, so much so that I've given it the personal touch by referring to you as 'reader'.

Would you like to be able to control your mind, like a zen jedi, only much more effectively? Well now you can!

Just for my readers I'm offering this special deal, but hurry, it's going to close in 19 seconds' time!

For just USD 99.99 * you will be able to obtain anything you want, simply by going into my DeepTrance™.
 
What's DeepTrance™? Quite simply, DeepTrance™ is the revolutionary new concept in total mind power which takes the best of the last 4000 years of human spiritual achievement, improves it and distills it into a set of 2x 45 minute CDs which will enable you to achieve your spiritual goals of earning twice as much as your parents, being able to reverse out of your drive much more quickly than your neighbour can, without scraping the car this time, or having the lowest handicap in you local golf club.

The teachings of Moses, Jeremiah, Solomon, Budda, Confucius, Jesus Christ, Marcus Aurelius, Muhammed and others are taken as a whole and thrown altogether in onbe big pot pourri (they all said pretty much the same thing anyway) until we see what comes out at the other end.

With just ten minutes per day or use, you will achieve a higher state of consciousness than any zen master, within one month of starting the program, and your life will be revolutionized.

I'm very excited about this, particularly as my accountant has given me an indication of how much I'm set to make if I sell just one thousand sets. So, don't be an unspiritual pauper, buy it and make sure all your friends buy it to. I promise you you won't regret it, after all, it's your future that I'm asking you to remortgage again!

So, fill out the order right now - and as a special throw in gift, just as I'm that kind of a guy, I'll be giving a free copy of the transcript of a seminar I gave recently in Phoenix, Arizona, entitled "Why People Losing Their Jobs Is A Very Good Thing", but hurry - there's a limited supply!**

 * Per month plus postage, US and Canada only (overseas rates to Canada).
** or simply obtain a recording of any seminar I've given since 1977 when I last made a slight alteration to the patter.

Before There Was Four Lions...

The never disappointing Chris Morris' infiltration of one of those terrible day time discussion programs...culminating in questioning the presenter as to what happened to his formerly grey hair...it was a lot funnier than when the same program, as I remember from a day in the dim and distant past being off sick from school, got invaded by Nation of Islam/black power types, that truly sucked...

60 Years Of The PMC - Ooh I've Done It Again

2010 marks the 60th anniversary of the launch of the PMC. Yes, it's impossible to believe, but that's because it is impossible. To mark this auspicious occasion the PMC will be taking a retrospective of some of the outstanding posts of the past six decades. From Cold War to Coldplay and from Ban the Bomb to Ban the Burka, every decade will be represented, and includes highlights from some of the most talked about of contributors...Bertrand Russell, Hunter S. Thompson, Roman Polanski, Roald Dahl and Limahl from Kajagoogoo, to name but a few - none of them contributed to the PMC's pages (oh, hold on a second, Limahl had a regular section in the early 80s).

1977 saw the introduction of the short lived but much loved series of 'blooper' posts, entitled 'Ooh I've Done It Again..!'

Posted by the never-popular Arthur Goldsberry (who never, apparently, did anything else noteworthy), they were a collection of ill fated posts which started off well, only to fall flat on their metaphorical face because, tee hee hee, people sometimes make mistakes! There were times when somebody burst out laughing, forgot what they were supposed to type, or uttered some kind of double entendre. Here are some of the selected highlights.

Ian Botham has had an extraordinary game today. The young all rounder stepped out at Trent Bridge today to claim his....what, er, what did you say? Oh no - it wasn't Trent Bridge it was at Old Trafford, ha ha ha ha ha  - ooh, I've done it again!

To make a Spanish omelette, take four eggs, crack them open into a large mizing bowl and - oh no, I've dropped the eggs on the floor and they've gone everywhere! - ooh, I've done it again!

Ok here's the start of my post...erm...tssss, ha ha ha! I can't remember what I was supposed to write - don't look at me..no, well you started it, tee hee hee. - ooh, I've done it again!

The Prime Minister today was in Reading for the opening of the dsaki  rj103093 akrkeak 334919e r efehr a reareakk939293929  ,fea..üreüarä - .....///// ..   will someone get that bloody cat off the keyboard?! - ooh, I've done it again!

A woman contacted the PMC today to ask about a big storm she'd heard that was on the way, due to hit the South of England some time tomorrow. We can assure you that no such thing is going to happen. The very next day a force 12 gale hit the country killing thousands, and the PMC was made to look very foolish indeed - ooh, I've done it again!

Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king..fucking you FUCK FUCK FUCKITY FUCK, OH FUCK IT TO HELL AND BACK; WHAT'S MY MOTIVATION DARLINGS?!? - ooh, I've done it again!

Postscript: Goldsberry tragically died in on the toilet in 1983 after eating a phal curry accompanied by 11 pints of lager - out of respect for him, his regular blogspot was retired (and also because it had quite frankly been done to death).

More On 'Corruption'

Following yesterday's post about corruption in Russia, or more specifically a link to a video about those who speak out against it, our usually apolitical blog is gonna attempt to set out some thoughts about this corruption, for what they're worth.

Corruption seems to be one of those words, like democracy, which gets bandied around quite a lot without clearly defining what is meant by it (in the case of the original meaning of democracy, most of the populace in Plato's Athens, which in any case he was criticizing of course, were in fact excluded from any say in affairs of state). In order to call something 'corrupt' it is necessary to have an idea of an 'uncorrupt' version, just as you can't have an up without a down.

In the case of a computer file, for example, this is presumably relatively easy as we, or at least programmers, know what a clean file should be. But do we have a clear picture of what a corruption-free country would be? Presumably it would mean everything would be done by the book, so to speak, and that there was in fact a book to adhere to. No irregularities, no jumping the queue, bribes etc. Now, I don't know about you, but I can't envisagae that such a state exists anywhere in the world. Where everything is done fairly and on merit, and noone has any major gripes about the way things work. Indeed, political thinkers have diverged hugely on what form the perfect theoretical state should take.

In the UK for example there have been numerous scandals involving large financial donations to political parties in return for influence, expenses claims, control of the media etc.

One big area that I feel is a bit of a red herring is that of the never ending sex scandals. Without condoning them, these largely seem to fuel public demands for salaciousness and don't, necessarily, impact on the running of affairs of state. Naturally there are some exceptions to this, such as the Profumo affair which potentially threatened national security, but this was almost half a century ago now. It reminds me of the story told about Lincoln when, in the early stages of the civil war, things weren't going very well for the Union as they lost battle after battle. Some aides, generals whatever came to him snitching about General Hooker's alleged, shock horror, addiction to the bottle. Lincoln simply asked what brand of whiskey Hooker drank and when informed ordered bottles of the same to be sent to all of his generals since Hooker was the only one that was winning any battles. A little bit facetious but, whether it's apocryphal or not it illustrates a point.- someone's personal life need not have any bearing on their professional function and that goes for politicians too (provided they don't have the gall to start lecturing us about morality, I'm remembering John Major's fiasco of an administration here). We seem to expect our politicians to be next to sinless, even as the bulk of those decrying them are not likely to be any worse, or any better, forgetting that all of the prophets had their iffy moments, so it seems a little bit unrealistic to hold mere politicians up to a much higher standard than we apply to ourselves.

But I digress. If we have no example of a perfectly uncorrupt state in reality, maybe we can show that to some extent some countries vary hugely in their adherence or otherwise to some sort of theoretical model people have in their minds, although even then these things are hard to quantify.

What we're left with really is people's perceived view of a government's corruption, and naturally Russia scores very low here even in its own people's eyes. I think the answer is that we have to give credence to people's common sense here - if it walks, talks and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck, without going into detail of what species of duck it is, how ducks evolved etc.  I'm sure there is a good deal of unfairness and downright oppression of the majority of the people to the benfit of the elite, and that this is what people really mean by corruption; having lived in Lithuania and Latvia I've come into contact with minor examples of this and no doubt Estonia is  hardly free from the phenomenon either. In other words outcry at this 'corruption' seems to rise in proportion to the ordinary folk's inability to get a piece of the action, and the yawning gap that arises from this impotence, rather than criticism of the general ethos of the state. But maybe I have a too pessimistic view of people here.

It's in part a question of semantics; returning to my opening theme, 'corruption' seems to be a catch-all theme for a variety of activities, or even spoken about in the same way that we'd speak about influenza. But the willingness of a few, courageous people (sooner them than me!) to use whatever avenues they can, including youtube, to highlight this, surely must be a step in the right direction in clarifying further what these problems are and the realities of the suffering of the many millions who have to live with this every day.

Vladimir Demovsky And His Youtube Clips

Brave guy, and other people, and it shows the power of the internet - not going to slag off youtube again!