General subjects with a focus on philosophy, morals, epistemology, basic income, the singularity, transhuman
Phil Osborn's Articles In Current Events
July 23, 2016 by Phil Osborn
After listening to a fair amount of the Republicrat's venting and angst last week, and now the Democans pretty abstractions - trying to paint a new face on a tired progressive philosophy, I've come to the conclusion that we ought to do something.  Soon. The real problems - climate change, hair-trigger nuclear holocaust, new plagues, aging, massive corruption, 1 billion people on the edge of starvation, looming massive unemployment due to robotics, intellectual property used ...
August 9, 2015 by Phil Osborn
The Morals and Rights Issues Regarding Vaccines Phil Osborn  August 9, 2015 See also: http://www.sb277.org/ http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160SB277 http://lulapilgrim.joeuser.com/article/304336/Vaccinations---Pros_and_Cons I suppose I should be happy.   More to do to set the world straight, right?   Except that this one is a doozy, a  potentially Sisyphean task, tail-eating and self-referentia...
August 20, 2014 by Phil Osborn
Ebola Now How to deal with the aftermath Published on August 20, 2014 By Phil Osborn In Current Events   on www.joeuser.com February 28th, 2016 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-hawaii-dengue-idUSKCN0VI0G2 In the wake of the near panic over Zika, a few voices have noted  that dengue and several other deadly viruses are carried by the same group of people-loving mosquitos, species that have hitched rides to new locales, such as the southern U.S. and now...
November 9, 2013 by Phil Osborn
What immediately follows is my own take on the discussion concerning problems with licensing more bars or liquor outlets in downtown Santa Ana, in the face of known problems of public drunkeness, under-age drinking and a history of related problems. People drink because they are in pain or dealing with stress. This "solution" (no pun intended) can work on an occasional or low level - 1-2 drinks per day - but tends to perpetuate the problems, especially when multiple drinks are involved. ...
October 24, 2007 by Phil Osborn
All day long today, working indoors doing web design and related computer work in Irvine, OC, I have felt as though I had a cold. My throat is scratchy, my nose stuffed up, and I'm coughing constantly, my stomach feels queezy and there is a dry, metallic taste in my mouth. When I left work just 30 minutes or so ago, it felt more like 7:30 PM than 5 PM. Everyone was driving with their lights on. The sun was still high in the sky, a lurid red-orange ball that you could stare directly into...
March 10, 2005 by Phil Osborn
Update: 04/12/05 Well. Done at last! Almost, anyway. The room that I thought I had nailed down to rent while I reorganized all my stuff disappeared when the owner had her sister run a credit check and discovered that I had no credit history prior to 1999. Of course not! I paid cash or check or money order and only finally broke down and got a credit card when it became too cumbersome to deal that way on line. So, all my years of avoiding the horrendous charges and worries about cr...
October 26, 2015 by Phil Osborn
12/03/2016: So...  WHO spent the most $ (2 to 1)?  WHO was elected anyway?  Do I have to say it?  ITYS And, to be fair, I figured that the election was probably in the bag for Clinton, anyway, regardless of funding, but the funding issue clearly did not make a difference.  Trump could probably have spent a lot less and Hillary a lot more without changing the results.  So, will all the experts who rake in the big bucks to help poor hapless politicia...
September 5, 2015 by Phil Osborn
  12/19/2015  (This is where our medical coverage dollars are eaten by the system) See also my earlier blog on errors in billing as well as major screw-ups at Social Security regarding Medicare...  http://philosborn.joeuser.com/article/464456/Medicare_FRAUD_-_1-800-633-4227   01/24/2016   What a NIGHTMARE!  If Medicare, Blue Shield, and Anthem/Blue Cross are examples of our future, then good bye, homo-sap.  I have spent averaging two h...
May 25, 2014 by Phil Osborn
To: CityCouncil@tustinca.org Thanks for your attention to this matter. In brief, the Tustin library has become increasingly unusable for legitimate pusposes, due to the failure to address the problems of various noises making it impossible to concentrate on any serious research.  Along with the noise issues, there has been a slowly increasing level of related problems, associated largely with the concentration of homeless with obvious mental problems who nevertheless hang on to e...
September 5, 2012 by Phil Osborn
See http://philosborn.joeuser.com/article/412425/Occupy_Earth  for the background for this thread, which is becoming ridiculously long and cumbersome.  In summary, it deals with an attempt to launch a quid pro quo between a small group of listener subscribers to the Pacifica FM station, KPFK, and the local Occupy movement.  In exchange for votes to put them on the Local Station Board, which would require a lot of Occupy people to become subscribers at minimum $25 - and the d...
November 27, 2005 by Phil Osborn
Actually, it was not all THAT bad. I got to watch some cool Japanese anime, eat a lot of munchies, get into a few minor discussions that almost managed to go somewhere, and one of the Panel discussions did actually turn me on to some information that may easily be worth the whole weekend's investment. So? Why am I bitching? I expected MORE! I've been going to LOSCON from the early '80s', missing very few of them. Usually - for the past 15 years, anyway - I came away really wishing tha...
October 16, 2004 by Phil Osborn
Nalini of KPFKChat.org submitted a pointer to this little site bashing Bush. Not bad. Want to see something REALLY bizarre? Take virtually any interview with Condi - say the ones from "Uncovered" - and s l o w i t d o w n . . . on your DVD player. You'll see what I mean. I never knew that a human face could exhibit so many extremes of expression in a period of one-second. Now try playing it backwards - S l o w l y. Watch how she twists her mouth around each sy...
September 12, 2004 by Phil Osborn
As I've discussed in recent articles here, the criminals have not been slow to take advantage of new technologies. The ubiquitous use of cell phones by the little gang who were trashing my life for the past year is just one example. The highway street-racer kids and their use of cellphone lookouts is another. I think that any competent bank robbery team could use that kind of technology very effectively to reduce their risk. If I were heading such a team, I'd be looking into Cell or RF vi...
January 1, 2004 by Phil Osborn
1/1/04 Listening to Julia Butterfly Hill discussing living with Luna on KPFK and loving it. I especially liked her intro, with the concept of the spiritual integration, starting with your own breathing and loving your body and then loving the chair that supported you, and the floor that supported the chair, and the whole universe that made you and all of it possible. Didn't find much to object to at all until she started in on her economics. Typical left ignorance. Too bad, as I agree ...
September 21, 2014 by Phil Osborn
Q:  Is the U.S. medical system capable of dealing with ebola?  You be the judge: About a month ago, when I asked a local upper level librarian about what he knew regarding ebola, and whether anyone at the library might be interested in doing a presentation that could cover emergencies such as Earthquake or Ebola, going over standard heath measures and preparations - water storage, emergency services, etc., his response was that anyone in the U.S. who was afraid of ebola wa...