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Full Title: Rudolf Steiner - An Introduction to His Life and Work - by Gary Lachman

Rating: 4/5

Writing Style: A friendly read-able book. The life of Rudolf Steiner might come out dry for some authors to write, but Gary Lachman, founding member of the rock group Blondie, did a great job and I will look for his other books;  ’The Garden of Hermetic Dreams‘ or ‘The Dedalus Book of Literary Suicides‘. 

Comments:

Rudolf Steiner was super-busy. If he chose this life mission before he was born he went for the max, pushing as many spiritual integrative ideas as he could in a materialist environment. Worth learning more about this guy. 

I found this book random walking through the library… so it introduced me to many keywords worth Google researching; Goethean Science, Theospohy, Anthroposophy (… phew that has to be shortened for a dotcom name), Ahriman, even Lemuria. (Steiner’s idea of Lemuria occurring just prior to the moon forming looks nifty.)

I haven’t found any Steiner podcasting, but this Rudolf Steiner Audio site looks OK. I am sure everyone would prefer to hear Steiner’s own voice and not a reading by someone else, but what can you do. (Like Terence Mckenna’s charismatic voice power.) Not much podcasting or blogging back in Steiner’s day.

My laptop was sick yesterday with a spy-ware-virus combo attack. Mainly ‘Vista Anti Virus 2008′ along with ‘Zlob’ mal-ware. Just awful. Every time Internet Explorer launched everything got wrecked again…

No Money Required Steps I did to recover ->

Free: Spybot Search and Destroy helped stop some of the infection. At least to make the pc sort of use-able.

Free: RRT (Remove Restrictions Tool) recovered my hidden c:\ drive, taskmanager, etc… (Then I was able to manually delete the vav.exe files to stop that part of the pain.)

Free: The Safari browser that comes with iTunes helped for web research. (Since Internet Explorer was toast, and when opened it re-infected everything.)

Free: Roguefix  cured everything. The best place for this attack-recovery. Super informative. 

Free: SUPERAntiSpyware for a final deep scrubbing. Everything looks ok now, but this app still found one more trojan dropper after 3+ hrs of scanning. 

It took me way too long to recover since most Free software gives you a long in-depth scan for an hour, tells you that ‘Yes, you are infected!’ (already knew that…), and for $30 bucks they might be able to fix it. Going through the mega-scan in a corrupted slow system is so painful…. afterwards when they ask for money I am completely not interested. More likely to do a full windows re-install.  

Overall it was a hard reminder on why a person should never have unprotected surfing.

On Sunday I once again finished the ING Edmonton 21.1 km run. My time was 1:53:02. Only a couple minutes faster than my time last year in the same event, but overall I felt better this time. A good run on a very hot day. I’m sure I had slight heat sickness for the rest of Sunday.

This run I used my new Garmin forerunner 405 model for tracking time, distance, heart rate… and not my older forerunner 201 model. The new watch is better in every way except for battery life. My 201 could last for weeks, while the 405 seems to barely make it a few days. Have to get used to treating my 405 like a cell phone and plug it in every night to recharge. It should come with an i-pod like docking station for recharging and not a regular ac adaptor plug-in.

To prep for the run I spent more time getting used to 8 min mile pacing, but during the actual race for any slight decline I ended up getting carried with the crowd for stretches of 7 min mile pace time. So I’ll start working on that speed for next year, even though that will probably just mean I over-exert myself doing a 6 min mile pace whenever. For my first few half marathons I really had to train for the race distance, but now I am so comfortable with that length I can finally relax and train for speed. To actually do one flat, straight mile in 6 minutes would be cool.

Speakers: Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake

These 3 podcasts are the continuation in a series of podcasts consisting of three great minds explaining what-ever topic they feel like. 

The Resacularization of the World - bringing back a Mother Earth religion 

Education in the New World Order - improving the education system through workshops

Comments: This podcast was a bit dry for me. I think they might have updated all of their educational ideas if the Internet was up and running back then. They might prefer web based, self paced, free internet web page course for anyone interested in any topic. Like an enhanced Wikipiedia with every page also including a free learning module covering that page’s topic. This can at least potentially work for a billion students 24×7.

The Apocalypse 

Facebook is in the middle of pushing out it’s new look. In keeping with that I am working through updating my three applications. Apple Detox first, looks ok, next up is the more active Psychic Connection, saving Animal guides for last. I’m not racing through the updates since Facebook is probably going to keep the old layout active until next year. So the applications have to be use-able in both formats for a while. Tedious to maintain 6 php layouts… 

Here are some of the new spiffy Psychic Connection icons to go with the plain word-menu descriptions->  

Now I am going through the various php pages to update the layouts. Right now I don’t think I’ll change the game too much, just the look to deal with the new Facebook application boxes, profile box application width change, a tab page, and the larger canvas page width. Plus even more details that Facebook changed for applications.

At least all the Facebook changes have given me a reason to even login to their website again. I’m going through the Facebook fatigue most user have to deal with. Just don’t have a compelling reason to go there.

A good show, but not great. Giving Brock’s fight the co-main-event title seemed a bit strange (media hype thing).

Georges St-Pierre beats Jon Fitch

GSP almost finished it early, but after that attempt seemed to hold off for the safe eventual decision win. That’s alright, but not great. If he keeps using that game plan, maybe he will start losing fans.

Letting BJ Penn into the ring to promote their rematch looked a bit cheesey. Business is business though.

Jon Fitch did pretty good. Sometimes a fighter moves up the ranks crushing everyone, but gets smashed when he finds out the very top guy is way better than everyone else. GSP found this out with Matt Hughes. Fitch found that out with GSP this fight. If/when a rematch happens in a couple years it should be a better fight to watch.

Brock Lesnar beats Heath Herring

Brock had a great start, but kinda fell back into boring wrestler fighter mode -> lay on you opponent squishing him until the fight ends. If it was anyone else the announcers would have been pointing this out, but no bad words can be said against their celebrity rising star. (Still reminds me of Kimbo Slice, or maybe a new age Dan Severn.) I hope Brock trains hard to learn some new attack moves.

Kenny Florian beats Roger Huerta

Huerta looked like a well trained honorable warrior that ends up losing. Florian looked more UFC veteran using every trick and point-scoring -system attack to win a decision fight he was probably outclassed in. Huerta will be ready to crush Florian in their next fight.

Jason MacDonald loses to Demian Maia

Jason looked great, but Maia has even better skills. This was a great fight to watch.  Submission grappling jumbo mess. Neat.

Cheick Kongo crushes Dan Evensen

Kongo looked great, but he still might not get the title shot he asked for. I’m guessing he’ll face Brock Lesnar next.

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Overall the show was good, but it really highlights how a mega celebrity giant like Brock Lesnar can get all the breaks to move up the heavy-weight ranks fast. If it was anyone else you might say Brocks decision win was a bit boring. Or maybe GSP decided to go for a cautious safe win instead of finishing Fitch. UFC fighters should train striking, grappling, and tv-personality fan-building to get a title shot.

For me there are alot of guys I’m cheering for this fight card, but no fights between any of my favorites. So it’s a good card, but not awesome. Still probably better than UFC 86, a one-great-fight show.

Georges St-Pierre Vs. Jon Fitch

Story wise I am hoping GSP can dominate Jon Fitch to allow for the possibility of a Super Fight against Anderson Silva. Even though Jon Fitch looks pretty good.

Brock Lesnar Vs. Heath Herring

Fight wise I should be picking Heath Herring, but I have to cheer for Brock. If Brock wins the UFC will almost instantly give him a title shot (maybe one more fight). Then he somehow underdog wins that fight… it would be awesome for the show. (Like Forrest winning.) Experience/Skill wise I can’t see that happening. Maybe he would have to headliner fight Kimbo Slice for dueling media celebrity star status.

Kenny Florian Vs. Roger Huerta

I’m still not a big fan of this weight class yet… kinda just want to see BJ Penn take another shot at Georges St-Pierre.

Jason MacDonald Vs. Demian Maia

Jason has to dominate a couple more fights for his next title shot. Hopefully he can do this to avoid staying as UFC stepping stone for other rising stars.  

Cheick Kongo Vs. Dan Evensen

Cheick’s been fighting better lately. He’s put in enough time that a title shot would be OK. But the heavyweight division is so tough now that he just might be outta time/luck.