Last week we started offering an ebook, THE NEVER ENDING, to anyone who made a PayPal donation of ten dollars or more to viewzone. The money is needed because advertisers sometimes don't like to see their ads next to topics that... well... might not make you want to buy a new car or care about your credit report number. If they see something that's not making consumers see the world as rosie, they complain or pull their ads and our revenue goes down the toilet along with free speech and your right to know. THE NEVER ENDING was put together with actual photos and images from Dan Eden's true adventure. I know you'll enjoy it so check it out. It's been translated in many different languages already and read by a million people. You will be truly inspired and, at the same time, help what we're trying to do here at viewzone. Some old news: This world is full of all sorts of people. At 60 years old I thought I had figured out who was good and who was bad. But this week I learned yet another of life's lessons. I'd like to share it with you. Since the late 90s I have been interested in some petroglyphs and ancient history associated with Southeast Colorado. I've made several expeditions there, which you can read about here on viewzone. Since I live thousands of miles away from there now, it has been difficult to continue what I started. And so I was quite pleased when a woman named Catherine French sent me an e-mail and offered to visit some of the sites, take pictures and send back some GPS coordinates. We had never done that on the previous visits, mostly because the technology was not available. I sent her maps and gave her detailed directions and even introduced her to some of the people that I had made friends with on previous expeditions. I thought she was sane and level-headed. She seemed quite friendly and mellow -- until she asked me about why the viewzone.com web site was linked to a mirror site, viewzone2.com. I explained that one of my local advertisers did not like an article I wrote which was critical of the Israeli use of phosphorous [below] in the Gaza conflict -- an established fact -- which resulted in the deaths of many civilians and children. I first moved it to the mirror site, then I eventually took the page down.  I am not a political person and try to keep far away from political matters -- especially the mid-East conflict. But I am a Christian and a pacifist. I don't like killing children -- of any race. Besides, viewzone's tagline is "A look at life from different angles," so we expect some controversy and usually welcome rational debate. Nevertheless, I must have hit a nerve. Somehow the patina of the graceful, kind person I thought I knew quickly changed, revealing the festering meanness and venom that comes from hating an entire race of people. I received the following bitter e-mail, along with dozens of racist, anti-Palestinian links and videos: Where are the printed and available reports from the EU and UN on this supposed phosphorus materials? Well, I guess I am never too old to learn! I do have some things I have learned in my many years though. I used to fight evil when I confronted it. When faced with racial hatred like she has inside of her, I used to try to either win the person over with an argument or try to understand why they got that way, who hurt them in their life to make them so full of hate... but recently I had an epiphany and I learned that you should not fight evil. Since evil feeds on hatred and anger and fear, you only provide it with fuel to grow. No. Now I just ignore it and let it pass. She wrote one last e-mail, now worried about getting spam from readers. Who would bother? There is far too much going on in the world to focus on this small imperfection. But it does serve as a sort of vignette of humanity and the increasing number of empty people who are searching for some importance, some sense of superiority, to fill the void in their lives. In the past I would feel sorry and try to help these people but, as I said, I think it's best to just move on and let them burn out naturally. In the end, she knows what kind of person she really is. And now, so do I.
It's June 10th already and we are closely watching the news to see what earth-shaking events were predicted for this date by the TimeWave graph -- with the improved Watkins math -- originally discovered by Terence McKenna. The 10th is supposed to mark a time when the rise of "routine" stops and then slowly wobbles along a plateau until everything "hits the fan" in early November 2010. In McKenna's original graph, July 10th was the last time the earth was going to be "normal" and marked a sheer drop to chaos and "novelty" that would continue until the end of time itself in late 2012. A mathematician, Wakins, noticed some minor flaws in McKenna's graph and adjusted for them in his new TimeWave. This made July 10th a less pivotal date, but still highly significant. Will something happen to the Gulf oil leak? Will North Korea set off a Nuke? Will the Israelis bomb Iran and be smitten with retaliation? We can only wait and see. Just a reminder, viewzone now has unlimited bandwidth since we changed our web host. It is possible to post videos and large creative works (if you want) as long as they are legal and you have the copyright. We will soon be adding a selection of other e-books. So if you are an author, please write and learn how you can post your work here. If you have any other suggestions about how to use our huge bandwidth, please write to me. [myristicin-at-hotmail-dot-com] Peace. Please! Gary |