SHELTER FROM THE NORM

GOD TUBE

It had to happen didn't it? You Tube vs God Tube. All of us heathens can now be redeemed by watching videos on GOD TUBE.

Here I was thinking You Tube was the greatest thing since sliced bread only to find out, I am part of the problem not the solution. Mea culpa! I thought You Tube gave voice to millions. I thought it brought us a window into the lives of so many all over the world - and thus we could learn, enjoy, understand and see many different viewpoints.

Silly me. It's got too much reality! So, the god squad came to the rescue - a place to "Broadcast Him"

I live with the great unwashed who have never spoken to god. I don't know what he thinks (mainly because he doesn't exist) and I don't tell people, "God wants you to do this or that."

But - but - hark the herald god squad - THEY know. So, here comes the sermons, the manipulations, the guilt trips, the promise of heaven or eternal damnation - and you can watch it all on God Tube, where HE hangs out. Yep, right there in the electrons, God the Geek is downloadable.

Oh mine heart be still. Another way to reach cult members. Whatever happened to the egalitarianism of the net? The dogma only of interaction and collaboration and information wants to be free?

I'll tell you what happened. This is scary to some people because when information is available and free, people think for themselves. And then you lose cult members. And since they are a source of huge dollars, a real cash cow, they have to be brought back into the fold. The electrons weep.

That Old-Time Religion

07:35 AM CDT on Wednesday, August 22, 2007 Associated Press

GREAT FALLS, Mont. - A former youth pastor accused of sexually assaulting a child in Texas was tracked down living here Tuesday, six months after he allegedly faked his own death.

"Child molesters say they choose kids with religious parents because they say they are more gullible."

That's logical. Faith is believing in things not seen or provable. I'm sure that mindset correlates with being gullible - i.e. believing something "just because".

Christopher Hitchens says religion is child abuse. .

Michael Lowy, Alternative Justice and Institutional Change

I copied that title from Google.   It links to a class Michael Lowy conducted many years ago. You can listen to it on line.

The phrase "alternative justice" is intriguing.   It is also brutal.

It is what happens to blacks, Hispanics, and women.   It is in fact what happens to anyone, anywhere who doesn't get justice served plain, raw and with no alternatives.

I concur that alternative justice causes institutional change.  Look at the U.S. government.

for more information on attorney Michael Lowy, (Palo Alto, CA)  you can read about him on narcissisticabuse.com/michaellowy.html

Mom and Dad are God?

(Note from Ann: I do not like sperm donors and egg donors and other methods of design a kid. But this is AWESOME. It is design a new species.  Can this finally be proof enough of no god? )

Artificial Life Likely in 3-5 Years? Seth Borenstein, Associated Press

*Aug. 20, 2007* — Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch

and they're getting closer.

Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of "wet artificial life."

"It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it," said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. "We're talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways — in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict."

That first cell of synthetic life — made from the basic chemicals in DNA

— may not seem like much to non-scientists. For one thing, you'll have to look in a microscope to see it.

"Creating protocells has the potential to shed new light on our place in the universe," Bedau said. "This will remove one of the few fundamental mysteries about creation in the universe and our role."

And several scientists believe man-made life forms will one day offer the potential for solving a variety of problems, from fighting diseases to locking up greenhouse gases to eating toxic waste.

Bedau figures there are three major hurdles to creating synthetic life:

   - A container, or membrane, for the cell to keep bad molecules out,
   allow good ones, and the ability to multiply.

   - A genetic system that controls the functions of the cell, enabling
   it to reproduce and mutate in response to environmental changes.

   - A metabolism that extracts raw materials from the environment as
   food and then changes it into energy.

One of the leaders in the field, Jack Szostak at Harvard Medical School, predicts that within the next six months, scientists will report evidence that the first step — creating a cell membrane — is "not a big problem." Scientists are using fatty acids in that effort.

Szostak is also optimistic about the next step — getting nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, to form a working genetic system.

His idea is that once the container is made, if scientists add nucleotides in the right proportions, then Darwinian evolution

could simply take over.

"We aren't smart enough to design things, we just let evolution do the hard work and then we figure out what happened," Szostak said.

In Gainesville, Fla., Steve Benner, a biological chemist at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution is attacking that problem by going outside of natural genetics. Normal DNA consists of four bases — adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine (known as A,C,G,T) — molecules that spell out the genetic code in pairs. Benner is trying to add eight new bases to the genetic alphabet.

Bedau said there are legitimate worries about creating life that could "run amok," but there are ways of addressing it, and it will be a very long time before that is a problem.

"When these things are created, they're going to be so weak, it'll be a huge achievement if you can keep them alive for an hour in the lab," he said. "But them getting out and taking over, never in our imagination could this happen."

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nuance - a subtle difference in meaning or opinion or attitude

nuance - a subtle difference in meaning or opinion or attitude

Knowing how to influence people to act when they are afraid is knowing how to read the nuances buried in their language.

I read the nuances of people's fears expressed in words and deconstruct the meaning. A ball of chaos is validated, then identified into its separate parts and paths are outlined to fix.

Nuances of destruction:  Some people do not like the talents and skills of others. They tear down the person with subtle nuances of language, manipulation under the guise of caring.

Woodside Town Council, Ron Romines, and Ethics

"Are You Tired of ETHICAL MISCONDUCT in the LEGAL PROFESSION?

Are You Tired of  LAWYERS WHO LIE?"

I wrote that so many years ago, I forgot about it.  But data tracking one of my websites today,  I found a father's rights group linked to it.  (Sometimes they like me because I call for oversight.)

I also found on there a quote I still like:

Mark Perlmutter, attorney and author, Why Lawyers (And the Rest
of Us) Lie              

                "...one of the systemic influences on lying in the legal
                system is that lying is a norm. It's an insidious
                development. We lawyers start by justifying it in
                circumstances in which 'everybody does it'. Then, once
                on the slippery slope of justification, we find it
                easy to rationalize lying in more and more
                circumstances. Eventually, it becomes so commonplace
                that we're now unconscious of it."

"...lying is a norm."  And this blog is named Shelter From The Norm.

Ok, cut to the chase. Ron Romines, Town Council Member for Woodside, CA is running for office again.  Ron represented my ex husband in a post trial, post appeal collaborative law disaster. There is a bar complaint pending for various ethical violations.

Engage your mirror neurons and come along with me for a ride on one of those ethical violations. You have hired an attorney at $350.00 per hour, two hour meeting each time. You pay for two attorneys at this price. Both attorneys engage you in a process based on honesty, transparency, and full disclosure. Should one of the clients fail in any of these,  they are thrown out of the process.  The attorneys are not expected to engage in deception and the emphasis is not on their actions.

But this process has no oversight.  Behind closed doors there is no court reporter. No digital recorder. No technology - we move backwards in time. While earning his $350.00+ an hour, the attorneys take turns being stenographers. They are multitasking while representing a client. These handwritten notes are typed up by a secretary and this becomes the "official record".   Should you not rebut each and every mistake,  they use your words against you. But I digress. There is no oversight.

In any situation devoid of oversight, corruption creeps in.

From the office of Attorney Ron Romines to  Attorney Michael Lowy:

Michael,

There is a series of emails that I am forwarding to you pursuant to Ron's discussion with you before he left on vacation. There are 9 emails.

Laura
Assistant to Ron Romines

Attorney-client privilege has a such high regard in law that breaking it by sharing client emails with opposing counsel is reason for disbarrment.

If a lawyer cares so little about following the law, about breaking ethics violations, can this same lawyer really be the model for the citizens of Woodside?

What would the rest of the country think of a Mayor Pro Tem who can't follow the laws?

Back to local citizens.

Does Woodside pride itself on its woodsy, horsy, small town with big bucks, cozy, we're all friends atmosphere?  Oh a few tiffs over bike riding, parked cars and Steve Jobs, but yes, it is a tight knit community. Just like the collaborative law community.  And do they police themselves? They do not.

Coverups may not seem so important in small town, have a venture capitalist over for Sunday brunch kinda town, but that's the point.  Corruption anywhere, whether in the academic air of Stanford University and cancer cures (that's another story, playing out in divorce court in Santa Clara County now), or Zimbardo's prison experiment, or a small meeting room with a very small amount of money at stake, but two monstrously evil attorneys, harming the clients paying them.

Do you think "monstrously evil" is over the top?  Ask:  Is there "baby evil?"

Walk on the slippery slope, and it doesn't matter.  Baby evil turns into monster evil.

Would you hire an attorney that lies about you?

Would you hire Ron Romines who wrote an email to opposing counsel agreeing to an ethics violation that harmed the collaborative people he promised to help? And then lie about it?

Is this what you want as Mayor Pro Tem of small, bucolic Woodside?

Only if you justify it:

                "...one of the systemic influences on lying in the legal
                system is that lying is a norm. It's an insidious
                development. We lawyers start by justifying it in
                circumstances in which 'everybody does it'. Then, once
                on the slippery slope of justification, we find it
                easy to rationalize lying in more and more
                circumstances. Eventually, it becomes so commonplace
                that we're now unconscious of it."

The Bar complaint will be posted on divorceandlawyers.com within a week.

Ron Romines as Mayor Pro Tem of Woodside and the citizens therein are no better than those who rationalize  "everybody does it."  From there, larger and larger lies become easier and easier to justify.

And one day, the monsters are running the town, the city and the country.

Crawford Texas is a small town with horses too.

The Town Council is the legislative body of the Town of Woodside, with all the regulatory and corporate powers provided under California  state law. The Town Council provides the policy direction that guides the operation of the Town, adopts ordinances and resolutions that constitute the legislative intent of the Town, and sets the Town's priorities through the adoption  of an annual budget and the provision of direction to the Town Manager. The Town Council represents the Town's residents  through these actions and through the conveyance of constituent  requests and concerns to the Town staff. The Town Council also appoints all members to all advisory committees, the  Planning Commission, and the Architectural and Site Review  Board.

 

 

"MD in a Box"

Lawyers finally catch up with the world of technology.

Take a doctor to your depo in your laptop!

"MD in a Box. The online company uses Skype, a  video-conferencing computer program that allows the doctor in New Delhi to listen in and type furiously when the testifying doctor says something ripe for challenging. This real-time remote access to medical expertise is used during  depositions and trials, as well as for research, reviewing medical records  in advance to see if there is a good case, and overnight transcription services." August 15, 2007 Florida Bar Journal

This is awesome.  Up to the minute information to rebut BS in a courtroom. This should  move into other arenas.  Family Law in a Box, Published Today! in a Box, IP Law in a Box, Forensic Psychology in a Box (That one should be in a box 6 feet under)

This is powerful. Technology is so far behind in the legal arena - and women are also so far from using it properly. They neither understand its power or like it.

This goes very well with my idea:  text a bar complaint against opposing counsel from the courtroom.

Rendezvous with Ethics

"A practicing lawyer has a constant and perpetual rendezvous with ethics." McClure v Donovan (1947) 82 Cal App 2nd 664, 666.

Don't we all?

Lawyers, judges, litigants, therapists, doctors, mothers, fathers, kids, spouses. All of us.

Why is this rendezvous so difficult?

Design-A-Kid

Designer kids on craigslist. This is really unsophisticated though - after all we have dna by the bay here - (Genentech). No gene array specs for all the heritable characteristics such as optimism (2 long alleles)? or not so bad memories gene? or how about coded for fast twitch or slow twitch muscles so you can design a cross country runner or a sprinter - your choice.

FAMILY FORMATION (palo alto)

Reply to: serv-392031872@craigslist.org Date: 2007-08-08, 4:55AM PDT

We can assist you with a private, domestic adoption. Or if you need a surrogate or egg donor, we would be pleased to assist you. Contact our family formation firm so we can discuss how to best create your family.