From the Desk of Michael Ross

Here you'll find my thoughts on business, marketing, psychology, government intrusion, freedom of thought and person, all from a commonsense point of view. I also house all my products here too.

May 28, 2005

Experience The Road Rage - I Did

I can now proudly proclaim that I am a member of the Victims of Road Rage club - as in, someone who has now personally experienced genuine road rage as opposed to a toot of the horn and a fuck you with a flip of the bird as they drive away.

Let me tell you all the juicy details...

I was coming down a hill that had a small, nothing speed bump half way down. I was about to hit the speed bump and a guy up ahead on the right was parked in his driveway looking at me. He then back out right in front of me and stopped in the middle of the road. As it was a road that allowed overtaking, I simply went around him and kept going. I turned left a couple hundred yards further up, then left into a gas station another couple hundred yard further up.

As I put the nozzle into my car, the guy pulled in front of me, got out and yelled "I oughta punch ya fuck'n head in."

I calmly looked at this moron and he yelled it again, "I oughta punch ya fuck'n head in" as he walked towards me.

As he approached me I was contemplating how I was going to hit him IF he made a move. And having figured out what I was going to do, kept pumping my gas.

He got a couple of feet away from me and yelled again that he oughta punch me out. I just quite calmly looked at him. Which must have set him on edge because I didn't flinch, blink, back away or look in anyway intimidated. Then he said, "ain't cha got noth'n ta say?"

I paused, took a step towards him!, looked him square in the eyes and in a direct, firm voice full of control, and at a volume only he could hear, said, "I see no need to justify anything you said by replying" and turned to watch my gas numbers.

Well, that sent him into a deeper craze. He went off about how I came down the hill and blah blah blah. I took another step towards him and said, "It's ok. There was no danger. I could see you and what you were doing and you could see me. No danger." And went back to my gauges on the bowser, while watching him out of the corner of my eye.

Ah. That response sent him into froth-at-the-mouth mode. "Danger? Danger? I'll tell you about fuck'n danger." He came right up to me, a couple of inches away from my face and again threatened to punch my head in. Then it dawned on him that I wasn't the slightest bit perturbed or concerned by him. I had a look in my eyes of complete and utter self-assuredness that I would take him out in a heart beat if he pushed it. (Remember, I had already decided how I was going to finish him off. And that my martial art is BaGua Zhang - the martial art of overkill that concentrates on deathpoint blows and inflicting grievous bodily arm.)

He, now not sure of himself, took three steps back and yelled, "I'm gonna get your number and give it ta me mate at the cop shop and he's gonna come visit cha."

I asked, "And which police station does he work at?"

He replied, "Southport. I'm gonna give him ya number and he'll come visit cha."

I then asked, "Oh, would that be So-And-So, the officer in charge?" (Little does he know I am on a first name basis with a dozen or so of the police at that station as well as the officers in charge of two other stations.) But he was fart-assing around in his car looking for a pen.

I walked in to pay for my gas and he came storming in and tried to tell the cashier what I was guilty of - that I went around him after he backed out of his driveway and stopped in the middle of the road - and walked around the counter and grabbed a pen.

I went outside to offer him a piece of paper from my notepad but he already had one, so I jotted down his tags instead and went back in to pay for my gas.

I asked the cashier if he was a friend of her's and she replied, "We don't have friends here." I asked "What is he then?" and she replied, "Just a regular customer." I paid, got my receipt and drove off.

The interesting thing is, during the entire confrontation - even when he was inches away from my face - I was totally calm and had no adrenaline coursing through me. And this only comes about because of complete self-assuredness.

Think of it like this... the first time you do something new, such as go over a jump on your bicycle, you will feel an adrenaline rush. And maybe again for the first few times. But after a while that rush is not there and you now know you have the situation under control.

It was the same with me in this instance. If he had made a move I was going to strike his throat, crushing his windpipe and putting him out of action. And this is possible in BaGua Zhang thanks to what we call Fa-Jing (explosive energy ). It is an explosive move that resembles sneezing.

When you sneeze, the body gives a quick, sharp jerk. Using that same principle, there is no need for withdrawing the striking arm to cock it in readiness to release. Tere is no need to get into a stance to strike. There is just full-powered release from any angle, with the entire body moving and the force of the blow fully directed at the target. (BaGua Zhang is the only martial art that does all its strikes while in full motion - no stances.)

You may have heard stories of warriors going into battle and being completely calm - and therefore devastating. Or you may have heard how the founder of Aikido experienced this calmness during a fight he was experiencing, and upon that moment he became machine like with computer speed - his actions and reactions so fast as if he could read the opponent's mind and know beforehand where the blow was going to be.

This calmness is very real. And to someone who faces such an opponent, it is very unsettling. Because it gives them total 100% self-doubt about the confrontation.

And this is what happened in my example. He reverted from threats of physical harm to telling me he was going to tell on me, just like any scared child will do when they realize they are powerless to do something - they threaten to tell someone they deem to be in authority who can deal with it for them.

Maybe this is what Bruce Lee called, fighting without fighting.

May 26, 2005

Why The World Will Never Be At Peace Without Mass Death

There are some things that are impossible to do... flap our arms and fly like a bird, lift ten times our own weight unassisted, and reason with someone speaking nonsense.

There are certain levels of nonsense. There is nonsense we all agree with and there is nonsense that some people think isn't nonsense. And it is this latter type of nonsense that is specially insidious. For most people do not know how horrid it is until it is too late, if they do realize at all, that is.

Regular readers will know I am anti-religion. Which is to say, I do not believe in religion and am against it. Organized religion has, as its base, that a man is not worthy and must bow down to the higher authority stance. A type of slave/master deal. Where values are not produced or created but leeched from others.

Within the religious frameworks and dogmas there are some that are worse offenders than others. For example: the puritan work ethic vs praying to Allah five times a day.

When you have a look at the world, you will notice there are countries that create values and produce goods and services, there are countries who could but do not and instead make use of those who do, and there are countries who cannot under any circumstances.

And when you examine the countries who cannot create or produce values of their own, you begin to see a few patterns...

Pattern # 1: They are muslim countries.

Pattern # 2: They are poor countries.

Pattern # 3: They are often some form of dictatorship.

Pattern # 4: There can often be terrorist activities going on, on a somewhat regular basis.

The poorest country in Europe is Albania. Albania is a muslim country. Albanians outbred the Serbs in Kosovo and then the shit hit the fan.

There are no muslim countries that create or produce values of their own. Besides the oil which just happens to be under much of the Arab section of the globe, those muslims create and produce nothing of significance for the world. There are no medical breakthroughs. No technology breakthroughs. Nothing. And they are repressive "do as you are told or else" type countries.

When you look at the countries which lead the way in technology and medicine and industry, you see that they are NOT muslim countries. And the frightening thing is this... the value creators and producers do not breed at a rate that even replaces them. A value producing and creating couple will have one child, sometimes two. The muslims have half a dozen.

Look to Kosovo again. The Albanians were having families with an average of 7! That's average, meaning some were lower and some were higher. The Serbs were lucky to have 2 children per family. The christian Serbs were being outbred by the muslim Albanians.

And this is not just restricted to Albania. Look at other muslim countries. Besides producing nothing of value off their own bat, the families breed like crazy. They pop out more and more muslims who also producing nothing and add nothing to the globe. (Which would explain why Islam is the fastest growing religion according to Islam - they breed faster than any other religion.)

And this is the scary thing. They are value leeches that breed like rabbits who also see non-muslims as infidels who deserve to die. It's scary because this has been going on for a long time - 1,000+ years. And now they have access to weapons of greater power and destruction, it is a matter of time before they use them.

I do business with muslims. And the ones I do business with are more your assimilated, free range type who have intimate relations with non-muslims. No praying five times a day, and all the other malarky. But they believe in Allah and that makes them a muslim. Some of those types are value producers - BUT - they live in a value producing country. The muslims I am talking about in this entry are those practicing muslims who live abroad, or non-assimilating locals who sympathize with the abroad way of life.

There are hundreds of millions of them. And they breed like rabbits. They cannot function in a modern world because their faith is not able to adapt to a modern world. Instead, they want us to change to their backwards ways.

The ONLY possible outcome is one of confrontation. The small skirmishes will give way to larger and larger skirmishes in this thousand year war. And, unfortunately, due to their massive breeding and our lack of breeding, the ONLY way for there to be an end to the hostilities is if massive amounts of people die.

Because you cannot reason with nonsense, you therefore cannot reason with the staunch muslims who want us to become one of them. And either we will all perish to give way to a world run by Imams and Muftis and Ayatollahs - at which point all progress will cease, what progress had been made will decay, and we will all become like 10th century peasants fighting each other in little warlord groups. Or, they will perish to allow us to flourish and to keep progress going full steam ahead.

There is no, nor can there be a, middle ground. In the movie Independence Day, Bill Pullman, playing the POTUS (President of The United States), asked the captured alien if their was a way to co-exist. He was told "No." And when he asked the alien "What do you want us to do" the alien said "Die."

Now look to the muslim world. There is no way to co-exist with non-assimilating practicing muslims, and specially the Shiites and the Wahhabis. And they want us to die, or be under their control (which is really the same thing).

If this world is to have peace, massive amounts of people will need to die. There is just no way the muslims will be able to change their mind-set, because they live in fear of their non-existent Allah, who was made up by Mohammad. And they perceive self-sacrifice as a virtue and that when they blow themselves up, and us, they are doing a good thing for themselves and us. This mindset cannot be reasoned with because it is nonsensical. The only way is for them to all die.

I am not advocating for anyone to go and kill a muslim. Nor suggesting that muslims should kill us until we subjugate ourselves to their Mohammad-created god. I am merely stating things as I seem them to be... that the forces of Islam and Non-Islam are diametrically opposed and cannot exist together and that the only way for there to be true peace is if one side or the other is totally obliterated. The likelihood of total obliteration/annihilation of one side or the other is highly unlikely in the immediate future, or in the more long term future, as our evolved sensibilities won't allow such wanton slaughter of them, and there are too many of us for them to get it over on us totally. So in the interim, this thousand year war will continue on, possibly for another thousand years, or more. With more pointless deaths of millions of people sacrificed for both sides.

The U.S.'s foray into the middle east is pointless. There has been talk about winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqis - we won the war but had no strategy to win the peace. Unfortunately, that is not possible. They are non-value-producing muslims who see us as second class beings who would be better off dead. As they believe in wars of attrition, whenever the US and co leaves Iraq, they will claim it as a victory that we couldn't take it anymore and ran away. This will only strengthen their resolve against us. Yes, this thinking is total nonsense, but remember, you cannot reason with nonsense and it is pointless trying. It is an exercise in futility.

As much as all the belly aching from the left about the U.S.'s invasion of Iraq, it is only one small battle in a long line of battles of this war that has been going for a thousand years. Sometimes they hit us, sometimes we hit them. Sometimes many people die and sometimes only a few do. Sometimes the battle lasts longer than other times. But in the final write up, no side makes progress against the other. It could be deemed to be a stalemate. The never ending war. If there is really a world war, then this is it. This is the true world war. World War I, and it has not ended, nor will it any time soon. The other wars we learn in school as WWI and WWII were merely distractions.

It's funny, if all the Islam vs Non-Islam incidents were revealed in chronological order, in quick succession, it would be quite obvious to all that this is a war that has been going for a thousand years. But when the battles of the war are here and there a year or two apart, it is not so obvious. We can look back at the crusades and what really started them and see it for what it was, even though many years separated the events. We need to apply that same hindsight to the more modern events to see them clearly.

I can only imagine what the world of the future will be. If there is peace, it means many hundreds of millions (possibly billions) of people from one side or the other have perished. And we will be living wonderful lives taking advantage of all modern advances - or - we will all be muslims living like peasants in a dead and decaying world of depravity. Only time will tell.

May 23, 2005

Asthma - Big Pharma's Golden Goose

Big Pharma must love this modern world of ours. They must love it because it makes people sick and then they go running to the doc for a Big Pharma Pill to hide their symptoms so they can carry on. Carry on until their body is overwhelmed some more and a symptom shows, at which time they run for a big pharma pill again.

The best business models are those where the customer keeps buying over and over again. The more frequent the purchase, the better for business. You save on marketing costs - it is always harder to land a customer than to market to an exiting customer. And even better if you don't have to market to existing customers once you have them, and they keep coming back anyway.

One such big pharma windfall is asthma spray. Once a person has asthma, they keep buying the asthma inhaler forever and a day. And each time they do, big pharma makes some more money.

Obviously, with such a situation, it is NOT in big pharma's interest to actually cure your asthma. And nor is it in the doctor's interest as he won't get his cut for writing the prescription. To cure asthma you need to do it yourself. And the first step in doing so is knowing WHY you have problems breathing.

The all knowing eye told me today - on a health show - that one in four children have asthma. That's 25% of children. And that is a frightening number. Not because that's how many have it, but because that is how many will be taken to the doctors by their parents and given "medication" to help them. And that is a lot of children to subject to big pharma's vice-like "til death do us part" grip. And specially when it is all unnecessary.

Our body is a wonderful thing. It knows how to fix us when we are sick, and to get rid of stuff that is making us sick. Health, you see, is a natural state. Illness is not. If we are sick, and we remain sick it is only because we keep subjecting ourselves to the thing that is making us sick.

The body has many wonderful ways to keep us healthy. It raises the body temperature to keep nasties from multiplying while at the same time it speeds up the immune system. It forms small deposits of fat around objects (cysts, lipomas, and other lumps and odd growths). It places toxins in our skin until it can deal with them (we know this as a rash or reaction). It sometimes excretes the toxin through the skin (as in the case of certain childhoods diseases). It places toxins in mucus and releases the mucus (phlegm in the lungs, runny nose, etc.). It protects our eyes by watering. And so on and so forth.

So IF you are having some kind of reaction (illness) it is because your body is dealing with something. If the reaction continues it is because the thing causing the reaction is still in your environment.

When I was young I had bronchitis. That anti-biotics did not clear it up suggests it was NOT bacterial. It suggests it was caused by something in my environment. And in an effort to stop that something getting into my body, my body enveloped it with mucus in the lungs. Then waited for me to cough the toxin up and spit it out. The same toxin that was inflaming my bronchial tubes.

What could have been in my environment? Car exhaust as we lived on a main road; chemical fertilizers as we lived near farms; carpet fibers and lino fumes as they were fairly new items in the home and in their fume-making height when I was born; cigarette smoke; talcum powders; fragrances from deodorant and room fresheners; and so on and so forth.

As I was home all the time - being a baby and all - I surmise it was something within the home. And my bet is carpet fibers, lino fumes, cigarette smoke and smelly stuff in the house. When we moved and I began attending school, my exposure was less and my bronchitis went away.

Now let's come back to the "one in four kids have asthma" claim. And let's look at all the ways this breathing difficulty could be happening...

Carpet fibers; lino fumes; formaldehyde fumes from foam mattresses; fumes from laminated kitchens and cabinet type furniture; fumes from paint on the walls; fumes from the plastic boxes TVs and computers are made from; a proliferation of air fresheners (plug in, automatic sprays, oil burners, toilet bowl flush fragrance dispensers, fragrant air strips in plastic containers, and so on and so forth).

In short, the air in the house is laden with toxic fumes. And seeing as windows and doors now have better seals and don't allow airflow. And that more and more people close their hours up tight. And the children do not play outside anymore and sit inside, breathing the fumes while playing the playstation or Xbox, and you have a recipe for breathing problems.

A person cannot breath in those kinds of chemicals in the air all the time without the body reacting. And it normally reacts by producing mucus to trap the chemicals and not let them into the lungs. This could allow less air into the body. The lungs will breathe more. And possibly, as one researcher theorizes and my own experimentation verifies, we over-breathe. The result is an carbondioxide/oxygen unbalance in the lungs and we feel short of breath - as the body doesn't want to breath as much in an effort to increase the CO2 to even out the balance. Welcome to an asthma attack, or general feeling of shortness of breath.

Instead of rushing to the doctor for an asthma medicine, open the bloody windows and stop filling the air with toxic chemicals. This act alone will see the asthma numbers drop.

In addition, examine the preservative numbers on food stuffs. Many are known to cause breathing difficulties. (This is avoided by only buying fresh fruit and vegetables and meat and not buying anything that has been processed by someone else.)

It's also wise to examine the air where you live. I know one couple whose three kids all had asthma. It didn't appear in the hospital but it did when the kids got home. It took this couple a few years to figure out it was the chemicals in the air from the experimental farm across the road from their home. They sold up and moved a mile away and the asthma of ALL their children was totally gone within the month! No more asthma medicine. No more worrying when a child had an asthma attack.

If the lungs are playing up, it is because there is something in the air the body does not want to enter the body. Your job is to identify that thing - usually a man made chemical of some kind - and get it out of the environment.

It's also a good idea to look for possible air-borne mold. As might come out of an air-conditioner. This can also cause breathing problems.

One thing asthma is not, is a disease that needs medicine to treat for life. Doctors know this. And so does big pharma. That they are keeping quiet about it shows the corruption of the medical system. If you cannot trust a doctor to tell you the truth about something like asthma and/or breathing problems, what can you trust them to tell you the truth about? Anything?

May 22, 2005

And They Call Themselves Fans

There is stupid, and there is totally moronic. And the Manchester United fans who are opposed to their club being owned by an American, fit into the later Moronic area.

You have a guy who has bought shares in a club. While so doing, the value of those shares have gone UP. Meaning, anyone else who owns shares is now richer.

But some doinky fans don't like that. They say he will ruin the club and make all kinds of lame excuses why he shouldn't own the club. But what it really comes down to is they are bigots and racists. They don't want him owning the club because he is an American. And the flavor of the month is to hate everything American.

To get their point across they propose to NOT buy any club merchandise and to boycott all club's games.

And now let me ask you WHO is the one doing harm to the club? Is it the guy who has millions of dollars to invest, who has already increased the club's stock price, and who will inject new life into the club with his money - or - is it the idiots who want to deprive the club of its revenue?

If you said, the idiots who want to deprive the club of its revenue, go to the top of the class. Their actions are akin to the actions to be expected from Marxists and other socialist types. Those who are against capitalism - unless it is done by one of their own, such a Bromovic (from the former communist Russia) buying Chelsea.

I'd like to see Manchester's owner call them all out. To tell them right to their face for all the world to see, that their protest is NOT about Manchester having a new owner who is not an avid soccer fan, but it is, instead, about him being an American. And if he was a British millionaire, or a Russian one like Chelsea's owner, there would be no outcry at all. So all those protestors are actually bigots and racists.

I'd like to see it called what it is, then watch them scream bloody murder at him. But it won't happen, because at this stage its the typical political game. And calling it what it is, is just not done and might piss of real fans who would take the side of the protestors, in sympathy for the harsh words thrown their way.

Just your typical situation where a few bad eggs are making a lot of noise and gathering around them a bunch of blithering idiots who haven't had an original thought in their head for ten or twenty years. So they can spew forth rhetoric their "leaders" have filled their empty brains with.