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Alternative
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Royce's Web
Log |
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writings below include information, recommendations,
and the opinions of Zenzibar owner, Royce Carlson.
Don't blindly believe anything you read or hear. Use
your own mind and heart to determine what is true or
false. Question authority. Think for yourself.
Also see
Adventures in the Zone - a personal blog on
life at the whimsical edge of art and culture.
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Guru Trouble -
7/6/2008 |
I was recently researching what happened to a guy whose books I read back in the 70’s. Sort of a “where is he now?” kind of thing. Back then he went by Bubba Free John. He was a spiritual teacher that had many quite brilliant insights, in my opinion. Still, there was something not right. I couldn’t put my finger on it. As I said, the teachings were brilliant and useful. I never met him or joined an ashram or anything like that, probably because of that slight uneasiness, and because I wasn’t much of an ashram joiner anyway.
Read the whole article.
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Steampunk Redesigns the Future -
5/17/2008 |
Zenzibar has just added another category to its Alternative Culture Directory. Steampunk is an artistic and technological exploration of what the 21st century would look like from a late 19th century perspective. If
Jules Verne had described a personal computer in his science fiction writings in the late 1800's, it would
look like what the steampunks are creating now. Steampunk encompasses a range of creations from fabrication of fantasy contraptions based on steam-powered
Victorian-era tecnology and style to modifying the appearance of 21st century appliances like computers and cars to reflect their vision of a future aesthetic that never happened. The steampunks go beyond merely reading and thinking about what the future would have been like if H.G. Wells designed it. They are building it themselves in their workshops and garages and displaying their
works at such places as the Maker Faires
and Burning Man.
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Biofuels vs. Food -
4/18/2008 | |
Money and political energy are being put into the promotion of biofuels like ethanol and bio-diesel as a solution to rising oil prices and potentially diminishing supplies of oil. For the most part, the effort to produce biofuels has centered around converting food crops like corn, soybeans, and sugar cane to the production of ethanol.
Now I am hearing in the news that global food prices are rising and people are complaining. It seemed obvious to me that using food crops to create energy would force food prices up. How did the powers that be not see this? Well, maybe I am wrong about this and ethanol is the way to get off oil. I did a little research to see what was what.
Read
more...
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Health Care not Health Insurance -
2/24/2008 | |
I find it interesting and disappointing that both
of the Democratic candidates for president are promoting their ideas for some form of nearly universal health insurance for Americans. The problem is that people don't need health insurance, they need health care. Why is
insurance involved? Insurance is partly why health care is so expensive. The government has handed health care over to the insurance industry. The health insurance industry is unnecessary if the government mandates health care for all. The costs would be far less than they are now. Of course, if it's "free" to the public, we actually have to pay for it via taxes, etc. But we wouldn't have to pay the insurance industry, too.
Many people call the universal health care programs, like the ones in Europe, socialized medicine. They equate this with socialism or even communism. They want us to think it's bad. But the police department, fire department, libraries, and public schools work exactly
this way. They are public services run by the government and paid for by taxes. Would these same people want to privatize the police department and then buy insurance to allow them to call private cops if they are in trouble? I think that would cost a lot more than taxes.
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