In many ways Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) by George Orwell in 1949 is like an interesting thought experiment about what people with too much control might do and how it would shape society, politics, and individual people’s lives. And by too much power I am referring to a grave imbalance of power shifted from the people to a few “chosen” individuals. Sure, there have been people such as Stalin who tried to make something along the same lines happen but it has turned out nothing like what Orwell is portraying. Though contextually maybe not as relevant as it was when it was first published, the wealth of information and topics being addressed in this little book are in many ways timeless and should not be missed. Continue Reading

Speckly is the simplest and best meta torrent search engine I have come across. It is relatively new and still in beta testing. Nevertheless, to me, it has already dethroned all other competitors.

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This post is in response to someone who has forwarded to me William Campbell Douglass II’s newsletter. I won’t go into any specifics of William Campbell Douglass II’s truth claims. While there are certainly many aspects and claims made by William Campbell Douglass II that need to be put into question, these nitty-gritty specifics detract from the overall problems with the information he provides on his website (www.douglassreport.com) and his promotional e-mail newsletters. For that reason I would like to draw your attention to the underlying problems with the information presented by him and the potential threats to your optimal functioning. So here we go. Continue Reading

For many third world countries a stable food supply keeps death at bay, but when shortages occur, it puts millions of people’s lives at risk. We are currently facing a major food crisis, where prices have risen due to an increased demand, which is expected to double by 2030. There are ongoing riots in developing countries and growing global concerns. The World Bank is projecting that 100 million people will starve if the current developments continue, which means the food crisis will get worse, much worse. The soaring demand is caused by an intervention of several factors such as bio-fuels, dietary trends and pollution, and a common solution is found in individuals switching to a whole plant-based diet. The situation is far from simple, but if you keep reading you’ll know how these important aspects are tightly interconnected by the time you’re done.

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BayWords has disabled new registrations since August 2008 and doesn’t seem like it has been maintained ever since. It till runs on WordPress 2.6 but the good news is that existing users can still use it for blogging. My suggestion is to use WordPress.com or Blogger.com instead.

So the PirateBay.org, the torrent search and tracker site, is now hosting their own free blog hosting service at BayWords.com. You might wonder why they would do this? Well, it is all done in the name of free speech. There have been many bloggers who have been barred from expressing their right to free speech by blog hosting sites. It is for this very reason the PirateBay has created their free image hosting site with BayImg.com. Both have been created and maintained to ensure that free speech has a home on the Internet. (They do state that they abide by Swedish law.)

BayWords.com is a modified Multi User WordPress.org blog. I created a test blog at http://optimalfunctioning.baywords.com. The upside is that it was easy to setup, it is a free service, it has some nice themes, and possibly greater freedom of speech than other alternatives. On the other hand the downside is that they will be showing a limited amount of advertising, you only receive 100MB of storage, and it took way too long for the website to respond to the changes I was trying to make. In comparison WordPress.com is much quicker and I haven’t had any problems with their service. Time will tell if and how BayWords will be improving their service.