More Lies about Iraq

Still more lies about Iraq from the usual suspects...not in the administration.

http://www.porphyrogenitus.net/archives/week_2003_07_13.html#001477

I've pretty much given up arguing with folks about the war, the issues involved, the motivations, and the evidence. This nation is at least as polarized now as it was during the Clinton administration, only now it's the Democrats (and the left wing in general) proudly wearing the tinfoil hats and shouting in alarm at the sight of conspiracies behind every act or utterance by the administration. It was silly and stupid when the Clinton-haters were doing it, and it's silly and stupid now.

As someone (USS Clueless?) noted, one of the driving forces behind this is Noam Chomsky, who makes his living lying by omission. He can go to a beach full of beautiful white sand, pick thru the sand with tweasers, find the occasional black grain of sand...and slowly and methodically fill a bucket with such grains. Then he goes on the road talking about the awful black beaches of America, demonstrating his point by pouring out a bucketful of black sand and announcing, "and this sand came from those very beaches."

Technically true, but utterly misleading--and deliberately so.

See also http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh071503.shtml for how the press comes to a collective decision and then, uh, "shades" the facts to fit their collective view of reality--with examples from both the current claims of "lies" by the Bush administration and how the press ginned up the "Al Gore is a liar" meme in a similar fashion.

Learning to dream lucidly

Ever since we were kids my brothers have always claimed that they could end a nightmare by waking themselves up. Whether they were otherwise lucid, I don't know. I never could. My imagination was too vivid for that; I was there for the duration. Over the years I read about lucid dreaming and practiced some of the techniques I learned and I've learned to dream lucidly.

I don't always have lucid dreams, but when I do they're fun. The lucidity has taken some very strange forms over the years. The most bizarre form (and only once) was when the lower half of my field of vision took the form of a black matte like you see when watching a letterboxed movie. A script describing the events going on in my dream scrolled up that black background in white letters, complete with stage directions and quoted dialogue. I knew I was dreaming, and I could change the script at will, thereby changing what was happening.

More commonly I am simply aware that I'm dreaming and that therefore I have control over the events around me. It's rather like being a mage in the RPG "Mage: The Ascension" in that while everyone else in the dream is forced to deal with the dreamworld as it exists, I have a clearer understanding of reality and therefore I can--and know I can--alter that reality to suit myself. Also, like the RPG, my awareness is incomplete; there are things I cannot change, though sometimes I don't know til I try whether any particular change will work.

I also am always me in my lucid dreams. I have no "Philosopher" form, unlike, uhm, someone who posts here. But then, I haven't ever tried to change that way. I remain myself, but with the godlike power to reshape the dreamworld around me with a thought. It might be interesting to try that sometime, though.