Toxic Drums mission

I don't know.  What do you do?  I have this web site and this blog and I have just read an article by Chris Crum about Darren Rowse called Taking Blogging  From a Hobby to a Business.  One message is basically define your audience and just do it.  Well I have no real idea who my audience is and I can't seem to get around to "doing" it.

Initially I thought Toxic Drums was about "saving the world".  Quite a commendable objective I think.  A bit grand but why limit your horizons.  Actually I know that I am a very small part of any attempt to prevent humanity destroying itself but each part matters so I am happy to sit with that objective to start with.  Saving the world (or humanity) has the potential to cover a host of subjects.  There are different aspects from which one is trying to save the world like pollution, starvation, war etc. and then there are the various modes by which humans achieve these ends like politics, business, science etc.

So I am happy to split these things up and to look into them and to discuss them, promote interest and insight, to express views and even solutions (if anyone's offering).  But then there are the ways that humanity seems to operate that seems fundamental to the fact that these issues are problems.  Eventually I get to the way our culture seems to operate which actually explains a lot about how the various errors are occurring.  It's like a grand unification theory of what is wrong.  So the individual issues seem less relevant since they can all be handled with the new insight into what the fundamental problems are.  Well it seems complicated but perhaps on one level it is not.  The truth seems to be...

The fundamental problem is lack of love.

It seems almost trite to say that.  But all my thinking and my experience confirms it and I am left thinking of issues like religion, psychology and education.  They are all subjects relating to love.  Okay so they don't all admit it but in some respect they do all relate to love.  Religion makes it explicit, education has it as an excuse and psychology is trying to understand the emotional stuff that seems ethereal otherwise.

I have spent a large part of my time alive looking for some REAL way to understand what is going on.  On the one hand I have been looking for answers to angst.  I am distressed, bewildered, unhappy, depressed, anxious, stressed etc and I don't believe it has to be like this.  So I have looked for answers.  I have searched religion, psychology and finally counselling.  I have found only one thing that has real practical substance and that is counselling.  It is not that different people can't find therapeutic results from different disciplines but it is my experience that religion is too much about itself and corrupts love.  Psychology tries very hard to remain academic and ends up being a good observation of distress but lacks real resolution and remedy.  Counselling, on the other hand attempts to 'practise' therapeutic action.  It fails a lot of the time but there seems more chance of success through this route than any other.  I will mention the likes of Arthur Janov's The Biology of Love and Dr Robin Skynner's Life And How To Survive It as places to look for some serious insight into the modern understandings of what counselling can really achieve but my point here is that no amount of talking about it actually fixes the problem.  Action is required and for all the theories that abound the inner knowledge of love is the best and probably the most accurate guide.

Newtek Lightwave 3D v9 problem with Registration Key Solution

Having bought Newtek Lightwave at a phenomenal price (well it was as close to half price as you are likely to get) I eagerly extracted the box from the package and opened it to find three manuals and a CD box. I duly went through the installation process and the registration process which was strangely laborious and finally got my License Key provided via a link on the internet and then in an email as well. I ran the Registration Utility program, entered the Lock ID and the License Key and pressed "Accept". A message came up and said it had been successfully written.

YIPPEE!

I now ran Newtek Layout and the damn thing said there was no Registration Key and it was running in Discover Mode. Well I searched for an answer on the internet but couldn't find how to get the Registration Key entered such that it would work. But strangely, with a bit of hunting around on the computer and scratching my head I found a file in a folder called...

[Username]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\NewTek\LightWave3D 9\Programs

a file called license.key

So I opened it with NotePad wondering if it might be text and sure enough there was my License Key. So, just experimenting, I copied it to the respective folder where Newtek Lightwave was residing (i.e. C:\Program Files\NewTek\LightWave3D 9\Programs) and ran Layout once again. To my amazement it was now running correctly and out of Discover Mode.

So, if you are having a problem with the Registration Key with NewTek Lightwave the solution might be to search your computer for the file called license.key and to move it to the NewTek\LightWave\Programs folder.

Hope this helps :)

Google Chrome goes wonky over CSS a:link and a:visited

Arriving back in the wee hours of this morning I took a look at some Toxic Drums web pages. To my amazement and distress I noticed there was something wrong with the web site. The problem was that a lot of the links (particularly in the generic "see also" link bar) had gained a black background.

I investigated and found that this only appeared using Google's "Chrome". All other browsers were displaying the web pages as they had always appeared. This was slightly consoling but still a major worry. Eventually I tracked this down to the way Google Chrome was interpreting the CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) info.

In short if the "link" pseudo-class actually specifies a background color then if the "visited" pseudo-class doesn't specify a background color then Chrome set the background colour to black. Quite where it ascertains the "black" value remains a mystery for me but I guess it could be arbitrary or a default within Chrome.

e.g.

.style4 a:link{color: #CC0000; background-color: #FFFFFF;}
.style4 a:visited{color: #6600FF;}
.style4 a:hover{color: #FFFFFF; background-color: #CC0000;}


the above used to behaves as expected with only the color changing if the link has been visited. Basically an anchor in style4 has red text on a white background for a link and the color changes to purple for a link that has been visited. The hover psuedo-class is kind of irrelevant to this issue. But the display behaviour seems to have changed in Chrome and now the "visited" links were appearing with a black background. A remedy was found by specifying the background color in the "visited" CSS psuedo-class as below.

.style4 a:link{color: #CC0000; background-color: #FFFFFF;}
.style4 a:visited{color: #6600FF; background-color: #FFFFFF;}
.style4 a:hover{color: #FFFFFF; background-color: #CC0000;}


On further investigation I also found that by removing the specification of the background color in the "link" and having no background color in the "visited" also did the job as illustrated below:

.style4 a:link{color: #CC0000;}
.style4 a:visited{color: #6600FF;}
.style4 a:hover{color: #FFFFFF; background-color: #CC0000;}


What I would be interested to find out is whether Google has got the interpretation of the CSS right and all other browsers are actually fudging things or has Google gone and made a mistake with their latest "update" of Chrome. It could be that the interpretation can go either way but I would like to know.

The Swedish Prosecutor's Office commits crime against Julian Assange!

Fortunately, at the moment, the flailing machinations of the elite in power around the world are proving farcical. Julian Assange was accused on Friday 20 Aug 2010 by the Swedish Prosecutor's Office of rape and molestation. It was stated that he would be arrested. Then the Prosecutor's Office dropped the charges on Saturday morning (21 Aug 2010) saying he is "no longer wanted" and "is not suspected of rape".

Apparently Swedish media reported that two women had made allegations against Julian Assange but that in itself sounds like a fudge on the grounds that it would be very rash to immediately make a public statement and to issue a warrant for an arrest without some investigation. Maybe they assumed they could get someone to testify against him for enough dosh but spoke too soon and failed. What could that have been about? The attempts to accuse WikiLeaks and Julian Assange of anything are getting ridiculous. The American Government and its supposed allies around the globe are in a serious panic. There has been no explanation of the accusation simply a retraction. It is a smear campaign attempt I guess. But it is so rash and impulsive and inappropriate it is clearly bizarre and hopefully has quite the reverse effect. To accuse someone of rape in order to blacken their name, upset or frighten them, to disrupt their life, to create an inconvenience of significant proportion is a genuine assault on them. It is simply a crime. Who is going to now deal with that crime. The prosecutor's office should be made to compensate Assange and WikiLeaks for this assault. But I guess that really would be expecting too much.

Just more appalling behaviour by that hierarchy of judgemental oppression that governs the world. If only the people at the top would hold themselves to the same values that they impose on others.

CNN incredulous newsreaders ...

Windows 7 Home Premium

A warning about Windows 7 Home Premium:
Microsoft claim that Windows 7 Home Premium is so much better than previous versions of Windows like er... Vista. This is true in many respects but there are some really fundamental issues that Microsoft gloss over and even try to suggest otherwise. (see more about Micro$oft Windows 7)

There is no doubt that it is much faster starting up and shutting down. It is faster to load applications and and the interface is smoother for many tasks. But the trouble is they have focused on a typical user and although that will satisfy perhaps a majority it will frustrate millions. Microsoft focus on the computer as an entertainment console. As a toy. But if you want to actually use your computer for your purposes it can become very frustrating.

Computers are general purpose machines but Microsoft is turning yours into a toy for a mindless consumer. Before you know it the easiest thing to do will be to watch movies, listen to music, play games and buy more products and services from Microsoft. There is the argument that it is their prerogative to tempt you into their world to sell you more. Entrepreneurs would congratulate Microsoft for their ingenuity and inventiveness. They have done a massive amount of research into the psychology of the "user" But this "achievement" is only a good thing in a context. Rather like oil in the sea! It is perfectly fine to wash your hands in the sea but to spew billions of tons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico is no longer the same issue.

There have been years and years of of legal wrangling over the Antitrust laws basically alleging that Microsoft has abused a monopoly position in the market. Those legal battles unfortunately have only managed to focus on a tangible example of Microsoft's bad behaviour. In some way they have been a distraction from the generic behaviour of the company. Windows 7 lures you into a smooth, glossy, slick (not the oil type), environment and before you know it you are beginning to think the way they want you to.

They claim: "Share files and printers among multiple PCs" and "Connect to networks easily". The implications of this are wrong. For many people who have money to spend and little use for a computer outside of family fun these claims refer to features that will probably satisfy them. They do add the small print that says "from one Windows 7-based PC to another, you can share files, music, photos, and even printersacross your home network." and referring to the "Connect to networks easily" statement they add "view and connect to any available wireless network in as few as three clicks.". But what they don't emphasize in the first of these example claims is that you cannot have more than one network and all computers on that network must be running the Windows 7 Operating System! This is not what "networking" is about. This is a trap. Many users will find they have to buy a new version of Windows for all the computers in the house. Friends come round and they can no longer link into your network. The frustrations are endless. And for anything more than a mindless "user" this is unacceptable. There is a problem at the moment in the schools in Britain. Many of them have been duped by this sales hype. They have invested in the new operating system and found out they now have to spend vast rafts of money getting their systems to work properly. And who gets the money? Bear in mind that having invested MORE MONEY in the Windows operating system Farmer Micro$oft will come to milk them every morning and evening!

Micro$oft seem to be taking the term "Computer USER" to a new level of meaning. Oooooh - I just need some more of that WINDOWS 7 Home Premium.

Convert Delphi project to Delphi 2010 look and feel

Delphi 2010 button "look and feel"

How to convert a Delphi 6 project to Delphi 2010

convert old Delphi project to Delphi 2010 "look & feel" to Delphi 2010

buttons in Delphi project still look old

move project from old Delphi version to Delphi 2010

I bought a new Windows 7 machine.  It's a Packard Bell IXTREME X5620 with an Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 processor.  In general use it is wickedly fast.  I installed Delphi 2010 on the Windows 7 machine and ported all my Delphi 6 projects from my old trusty XP machine to the new one.

I noticed that in the designer the buttons were looking very up to date and Windows 7 ish but when I ran the application the form looked Windows 7 style but the buttons and other controls were clunky old XP/Delphi 6 buttons.  Very grey and stiff with sharp corners that any unsuspecting child could injure themselves on.

So I set about looking for a solution.

Select Project/Options/Application and set the "Enable runtime themes"

This does the trick.  Now everything is looking nice and modern.

Don't vote for the bad guys

Well thank goodness John Humphreys isn't a politician. On Thursday 22 April 2010 he interviewed Chris Huhne (the Liberal Democrat candidate for Eastleigh) on Radio 4. John Humphreys evidently doubts Nick Clegg's credentials to run for Prime Minister of the UK. I gather there has been a lot of complaints about Humphreys' manner of interviewing Huhne and Toxic Drums doesn't really give a damn who gets into power in the up and coming general election because most regular politicians are full of the proverbial anyway. Power is a funny game and some doubt that you can be genuine and survive in the political world. But the interview has prompted me to stick my ore in and to say what I think on the whole process of elections and the way people vote. (See: Election Fever)


In 1979 Margaret Thatcher became Britain's first female Prime Minister. Jolly good thing from the perspective of liberalism (with a small "L") just because she was female. She put into action a series of policies to reshape Britain and particularly it's economic model. The consequences were disastrous on many levels. It was immoral (but who the hell cares), it was selfish (but most people applaud that), it was short term (but that's what politics seems to be about) and it wrecked the financial foundations of Britain. The consequences were huge unemployment, riots in South London and across the country, and the total destruction of the coal industry.


Watching a fiction drama it is often easy to see who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. The good guys are often in rags, they are often oppressed, they are usually passionate about humanity and justice. The bad guys are power orientated and driven by the objective to control the rabble. They are often uniformed and mechanistic. The foot soldiers obey their masters unquestioningly and overall they use ruthless and overpowering force to destroy their enemy. They are almost invariably driven by their own interests.


Why was it that leading up to the 1983 election the image of the good guys was evidently the labour party who were supporting the miners in their desperate fight for survival and the bad guys were clearly the authoritarian Conservative Party. Most people I spoke to at the time were clear that they disagreed with Thatcher's policies and were in favour of helping get Britain back to some just system with less unemployment and wanted to do something to support the miners as their industry and living were being destroyed. I mix with people who are likely to be more left wing than right so this was not surprising. It wouldn't even surprise me if the Conservatives were voted back into power. But what really surprised me was when I had many discussions with left wing and liberal people after the 1983 election, when Thatcher got a landslide victory, it turned out that they had paid lip service to the left wing but had actually voted Conservative.


My conclusion was that when people are afraid the system is collapsing they will often side with the right wing power mongers. People seemed afraid that the system was collapsing and they wanted a bully to force control to "save" the country. You wonder how the baddies win? It is the old psychological oppressor scenario. The oppressor creates a bad environment and when you do what they want they reduce the pain. Conclusion for a semi-conscious sentient being is that they perceive the oppressor as their saviour and support them (because it gives them less pain). What is surprisingly missed is that the majority of the pain from which they want relief is caused by the oppressor.


Then there was the 1997 election when Tony Blair won the noble position of Britain's Prime Minister. Well that was a joke. Much as I tend to roam around the left side of the world of politics (and I don't care too much for the game anyway) Tony Blair made a speech which I watched on the television prior to the election and I was appalled. He was so committed to getting into power he actually said that given the Labour party was the right party to win they would do whatever it took to get into power. My old friend Uncle Adolf came to mind. He believed in saying whatever it took to get what he thought was right. And here we had another socialist doing the same thing. I really thought the British public was a little less gullible than that. Now Paddy Ashdown was the Liberal Democrat candidate for Prime Minister but he had been in the armed forces and I don't generally rate someone who dedicates their life to doing someone else's biding by using force. But he seemed a bit avuncular and I bet he would have made a better prime minister than that toff Blair masquerading as a labour candidate.


My point in all of this is that given you cannot trust any politician and given that the whole game of politics is largely a scam how about voting for the people or person that appeals to you most. How about avoiding all that distraction of policies and rhetoric, all that guff about promises and intentions, all that bull-shit and smear that comes off the political fans and just follow your heart - you know the liberated bit not the fear bit. Vote for someone you like and see what happens to Britain's politics. One thing I can guarantee is that we won't get a pleasant ride whoever gets into power but I bet we'll be heading in a better direction if we start voting for the people who at least appear to be nicer. And for your information I doubt I will be voting for anyone because I don't like picking the bully that I want to run my life. And I think a no-vote makes politicians a little more nervous about the security of their position. Anyway I am just a victim in the sea of other people's machinations so I don't give a damn. I'll be laughing at the stupidity of it whoever gets in.


So thank you Mr Humphrey, your evident dislike of Clegg has up-rated him in my opinion. If I were going to vote I guess I would vote Liberal Democrat as they are the only realistically available alternative to the two lunatic parties called Labour and Conservative. Where is the "Official Monster Raving Loony Party" when we need it? Come back Screaming Lord Sutch we need you.

Good God the Oppressor

Well it seems that I haven't got this blog thing sorted yet but for the time being I will just have to carry on in my chaotic way.  Someone introduced me to an idea the other day and it was this:  If you believe in a benign God then every thing that is good that you achieve can be accredited to him.  But when you encounter unfortunate or bad circumstances that is not God's fault and you are left holding the proverbial.  It is your fault.  So God gets the credit for good stuff and you get the blame for bad stuff.  I recall seeing a nun in a dressing-gown on television.  She was being interviewed after an earthquake.  Many other nuns in the convent had died when it collapsed.  She had a cheery smile on her face and declared it was a miracle and God had saved her.  I was left wondering who had killed all the other nuns.  A benign God leaves us with a bad self image and this is the work of prejudice and the oppressor.  See more ...

The Martingale doubling technique explained

The Doubling System

The Doubling System is also known as the Martingale Method.

Does the doubling system in roulette really work?

The doubling system is sometimes referred to as the Martingale doubling system or the roulette doubling system.  The Martingale system has some history and is a concept or idea in mathematics which can be applied as a method of gambling in roulette but the subject here is specifically "DOUBLING" in any 50/50 gambling situation.

For those of you who do not know of the doubling system it is pretty simple to grasp.  The idea is that you are betting on a 50/50 bet like the toss of a coin.  So each time you bet you stand to either win or lose with equal probability.  And the bet is 1 to 1.  I.e. you pay £1 and if you lose you get nothing and if you win you get £2.  It's like you and the other player both pay £1 each.  Whoever wins gets the £2.

So even odds and even money.

The simple rule is that if you won last time you bet £1 and if you lost last time you double the stakes.

More on this subject with detailed explanation and graphs at: http://www.toxicdrums.com/doubling-system.html

Pope understands equality!

Pope understands equality!

Is equality simply what works for one person or group?

There seems something contradictory about the Pope claiming that the British equality laws are unjust.  Slightly ironic too when he won't meet women without them wearing a veil.  Can you imagine Jesus refusing to meet women without a veil?  Mind you, can you imagine Jesus living in a palace, wearing the most ridiculous head gear, lording it over the rest of the world... hang on... wasn't that what Satan offered Jesus in the desert?  Has anyone pointed this out to the Pope?  I think he ought to know.  He wouldn't be living like he does if he knew.  Or is it perhaps that he does know but he doesn't care and most of his "flock" are too "sheep like" to notice?

See more at: http://www.toxicdrums.com/pope-equality.html

Toxic Drums Newsletter 2 published!

Toxic Drums Newsletter 2 published!

From Toxic Drums point of view today has been productive.  Newsletter 2 was finally produced and issued.  There is little premeditated, thought out and planned here at Toxic Drums.  Things happen more by inspiration or desperation.  There are too many things distracting from the work.  There are too many ideas and half baked plans.  There is the software updates to write and the new applications to get started.  I have far more ideas than I could possibly execute but the difficulty is deciding which will be most useful in the shortest time.  Most of the time things get started and not finished.  But I decided that enough was enough and Toxic Drums will have to survive no matter how polluted the site becomes.  Appropriate though that may be!

It seems Toxic Drums has had a patch of psychological indulgence.  Prior to Newsletter 1 there was quite a lot of atheistic, anti-God, anti-authority, verging on conspiracy theory stuff.  Post Newsletter 1 things seem to have gone a bit mental with cascading oppression, fractal abuse and the double bind.  Things will settle down and crystallize but just at the moment there is a kind of mental chaos that is both uncomfortable and creative.  Maybe I need a spot of transcranial magnetic stimulation to relieve the repression and to allow the creative forces to flow.  The fear with that, of course, is that I will explode.

Delphi 2010

Having bought Delphi 2010 as an upgrade from Delphi 6 I was expecting it to be a vast improvement.  Knowing and loving the product since it was the Turbo Pascal I have seen the changes over the years and the introduction of the Integrated Development Environment under DOS and then with the advent of Windows the virtually sublime Visual Component Library.  I have owned most versions of Delphi up to version 6 and have used Delphi 7 in someone else's office.  I was impressed with the advances in some areas and the debugging in particular.  I had a lot of experience of that because I was working for someone else and having to fix some dire code.  I don't normally have much call for a debugger with my own code.  But the help had become almost helpless.  I rely on the help because my memory is no good.  I have a good conceptual memory and I only have to understand polymorphism once and I've got it but can I recall where the ... well there you go.  I went looking for the override directive and could I find it?  No!  I'm not going to spend all day trying to make this point but it seems that Pascal is being forced into history.  I did eventually get to what I suspect is the best help by searching for Pascal Language Guide but it is seriously lacking in integrity.  I even read a remark in the help somewhere that "Real programmers don't use Pascal."  Whether that was a joke or not I don't know but if it was a joke it wasn't funny.  Pascal is a seriously good high level language.  As far as I understand it the guy who concocted C which later became C++ was basically coding Pascal so that it was unreadable.  The whole idea of a high level language is that it is easier than writing in machine code.  But hackers (as I like to call them) prefer to massage their egos by having code that "looks" really complicated.  It makes them feel cleverer.  But it doesn't help productivity.  And anyway they get away with a lot more bugs because it is nearly impossible to spot them.  Pascal was developed with two main characteristics.  One was that it was a teaching language so it was designed with very clear reserved words like begin and end to mark the beginning and end of a block of code and "English" style commands like for N:=1 to 20 do, and repeat...until  but C has to "shorten" every thing with curly brackets and weird arrangements of symbols.  It is simply not explicit and you have to have a memory for what all the codes mean.  The second significant thing about Pascal is that it is rigidly consistent.  It is fractal in a way.  There are a few simple rules and everything else follows.  It has been thought out very carefully.  But C comes along and starts making exceptions right left and centre.  After a while it is a jumble of special cases.  But back to the Delphi 2010.

I was trying to get the main form that I was designing to tear itself away from the top left corner of the space in which it's container was docked.  Eventually I found, under Tools/Options/Delphi Options/VCL Designer, that you can set "Embedded designer" on or off.  If it is on then the forms you are working with are as a multi document interface and they are stuck to the top left corner of their work space.  If you turn it off you are informed that it will not take effect until you close Delphi and restart it.  Funny but true.  So I did that and it seemed more agreeable until I realised that the form had a "Stay On Top" quality so that when you are editing the code the form is in front of it.  There seems no way to get it behind your work space so you have to minimise it every time you want to edit the code.  I found also that you can do something about the arrangement under View/Desktops.  But although it gives you the option to select the old style "Classic Undocked" (which I was so relieved to discover) it turns out that all the windows are undocked except the form in the corresponding workspace as the text editor.  So it is still stuck in the top left corner of a container.  So the frustration is mounting.  I don't get the "advances" in the code completion either.  Maybe I will understand it one day but at the moment it takes more work to manage the code completion unless of course you don't know how to program in Pascal at all.  That's a thought!  Maybe I could learn C that way.  No - it wouldn't work.

A lot of this ranting is so that a) I get to vent my frustration, b) I get to have notes on things I have found like the search for "Pascal Language Guide" and other interesting things I might forget in months to come, and c) so that there may be some useful hints and tips, workarounds and solutions for other people searching the internet.

Anders Hejlsberg was the guy responsible for designing the Visual Component Libray and he made an exceptional job of it.  He was then pirated by Microsoft and designed the .NET framework.  If any of you budding techies out there are wondering why C# ever got invented it is because the .NET environment is written in Pascal with the Visual Component Library and is basically an extension of it.  XML is largely the streaming structure from the VCL.  All down to one very clever man.  But most programmers use C++.  As the comment I noticed referring to "real programmers" not programming in Pascal suggests most people who were going to use .NET are C programmers but it is written in Pascal.  So they invented a middle ground for C programmers and called it C#.  Why not Pascal?  It annoys me.  But that is probably because I have spent so many years programming in Pascal and I am a very slow learner and don't want to learn C.  I have recently got involved with HTML and am shocked by the inconsistencies in that.  Sometimes I think it is a bit like evolution.  It has to have inherent weaknesses otherwise it couldn't evolve.

The Double Bind

An inescapable mind knot that can lead to schizophrenia.

On the surface the double bind seems a simple idea. It's a bit like a reef knot. Two twists and when you pull on one it tightens on itself ensuring a strong bind.

The term "Double Bind" was first coined in the field of psychology by Gregory Bateson in the mid 1950's. It is an important concept and Gregory proposed that it was the cause of schizophrenia. The double bind involves two contradictory demands in a context where questioning the contradiction is impossible or implicitly prohibited.So, for example, a teacher asking why you are late, expects an answer to the assumed situation that you are late. If, however, you point out that you are not late you get told off for being rude. The contradiction exists in the implication that a solution exists in the answering of the question. However, answering the question only asserts that you are late. So if you don't answer the question you are evidently in the wrong and if you do answer the question then you are confirming that you are wrong. To question the question is simply not allowed. Stuffed!The above example is very simple and easy to see. But the double bind is a severe problem when it is deep in the culture and communicated to very young children by the people they depend on for survival. When the parents have learned to survive in a world of double binds they will transmit these complex paradoxes even in their body language.What makes this situation serious is that the child learns how to survive by satisfying the demands and expectations of the parents. It becomes a mechanism of perception. That is to say that the child grows up actually seeing the world in terms of these contradictions. So they actually see a child contradicting a teacher as "rude". They are ensnared by the contradictions and, unless they are fortunate enough to have managed to resolve this dilemma themselves they will behave in a way to support and perpetrate this problem.

More on this at http://www.toxicdrums.com/double-bind.html

Magnetic Morality

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) alters peoples moral judgements!

Inside your brain there is a little area that deals with thinking about how other people think. It's a highly specialised area of the brain and the only area that deals with this particular issue. It is also not used for solving any other types of logical problems.

This specialised region is called the Right Temporal Parietal Junction and is located just above and behind your right ear. This particular function performed by the brain seems to be exclusively human. And it doesn't function from day one but takes many years to develop this unique skill.

Experiments with children have illustrated that this ability seems to begin developing around 3 to 5 years old. There is the Smarties, pencils and child experiment (Smarties are sweets like M&Ms in a tube) where the child is surprised to find pencils inside the Smartie tube and when the lid is replaced and the child's parent is invited into the room the child, at age 3, will expect the parent to think there are pencils in the tube. This is because there are pencils in the tube and the child isn't able to think of what someone else might think. By the age of 5 a child will predict that the parent will think there are Smarties in the tube and be surprised to find pencils.

This ability to simulate someone else's mind inside your own brain seems to continue developing in sophistication certainly through adolescence. At an early age children will make a moral judgement that someone is wrong to do something naughty but it makes no difference if that person was mistaken. They are still blameable. By the age of 7 children can realise that someone thought they were doing something okay but were mistaken and so are not so blameable.

The rest of this article is on the web site at http://www.toxicdrums.com/magnetic-morality.html

Good and Evil

"The problem of good and evil is that the good people think the evil people are evil and the evil people despise the good people and evil is to be despised. So the good people are evil and the evil people are good and that's why the good people can't figure it out. But the evil people have it sussed thereby proving that the evil people are really the good people and as for the good people... well they're just a nuisance."

If you have that understood then we can continue...see http://www.toxicdrums.com/good-and-evil.html