Photo: Sublime Sunset

Posted on by

Sublime Sunset

My last work with the Sigma 105mm macro lens. This is a closeup of backlit clouds against a cotton candy sunset. The colors are my favorite part of this; the lens really brings them out.

I used to think sunsets were only good as panoramas, but it’s just as interesting to focus on a small piece of the sky.

Canon Rebel XTi, Sigma EF 105mm 1:2.8, 1/200, F3.2, 105mm, ISO200, 2008-09-04T19:48:58-04, 20080904-234858rxt

Download the high-res JPEG or download the source image.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Please credit me as “Photo by Richard Thripp” or something similar.

Fake Personal Development

Posted on by

Be suspicious of anyone who suggests these things.

Be yourself.

Coda for: give up on your life now. You’ve done enough. There’s no need to improve yourself anymore. You can just be yourself. Time to start stagnating.

They could be talking about the unchanging portion of you that makes you who you are. Your “inner child,” perhaps. But they’re not. When someone tells you to “be yourself,” he’s telling you to give up on personal development now. Don’t be yourself, change yourself. If you need to be told to be yourself, you obviously don’t want to be yourself to start with. That’s alright, because you’re outward appearance does not define you.

It’s no crime to change yourself. What the “be yourself” people really mean to say is “don’t let other people or society change you against your will,” not “refuse to change at all costs.” But if you’re at either of these extremes, work on coming back to the middle, not being yourself.

Fate is against you.

While it’s comforting to believe my lack of success is the world working against me, it isn’t true. For 99% of people it isn’t true. It’s also a limiting belief, because by subscribing to it, I’ve immediately put my fate in the hands of others. It may allow me to make more progress for a time, but ultimately I will have to give it up to reach the highest level.

The whole point of personal development is to take control, not surrender it.

Budget your time / money / life.

All budgeting is a kludge. Real people don’t need to live by lists and check boxes. If you need these crutches, you only need them until you develop your budgeting intuition.

Budgets are training wheels. After a few months of budgeting, you give up your training wheels. Every decision you make is so good, the consummate of your decisions transcends all lists and check boxes. If every purchase you make is needed and justifiable, why do you need a budget? To prove to your mommy that you’re not wasting money? If you’re so close to bankruptcy that good expenditures will push you over the edge, budgeting is the least of your problems.

Don’t spend your life in training wheels. Outgrow the training wheels.

This applies particularly to “getting things done” fanatics. These people spend 10% of their time working and 90% developing systems to budget their time. They’ve become so obsessed with budgeting, they’ve forgotten the real thrill that lies in doing.

If you budget $120 for entertainment, and you’re at the end of the month only having spent $80, what do you do? Most teens / twenty-somethings spend (waste) the rest of the money. Our government does this too, which is why they develop huge deficits but never a surplus. If you have a surplus, you have no budget anyway. You’ve transcended budgeting. Congratulations on your new budget-free lifestyle.

Count your blessings.

Coda for: accept other peoples garbage because you’ve had too much good fortune of your own. Give all your worldly possessions to bums on the street because they deserve them more than you.

Whatever stuff you have, you deserve to have. Most of you aren’t thieves. Don’t treat yourselves like thieves.

The truth is, you need your blessings to provide larger blessings to others. I can’t make much progress in photography by giving my cameras and lenses to a needy child who wants to explore photography. It’s more important for me to keep my camera, so I can produce art that impacts and inspires friends and strangers.

If it makes you feel good to count your blessings, go ahead, but don’t let other people take from you just because you’ve been blessed. If you do, you’re saying they can use your property and energy better than you.

Live every day as your last.

This is another kludge. Kludges aren’t shameful. When you’re building willpower, they’re all you’ve got. But you have to shed your training wheels eventually.

Pretending you’re going to die at the end of every day is ridiculous. It’s not something a personally developed person needs to do. It’s something a personally undeveloped person may have to do to develop his sense of purpose. It drives you to replace comfortable busywork with important action. But once you’re on the true path, such games become juvenile.

No, you’re not going to die today. You can if you’d really like to, but I’m sure you do not.

Other people can teach you.

Nobody can teach you anything. You can only be taught if you’re willing to learn, and if you’re willing to learn, you can learn without being taught. If you want to learn, then your teacher is no more than a director and you’re really home-schooled. If you think you need to go to college to learn photography, then you’ll never be a good photographer. You’ve surrendered your life to the will of others. You’ve already given up. If you want to become a creative, interesting photographer, you have to do it yourself. If this scares you, you can’t do it.

Sure, you can change your mindset to one that allows you to learn. But don’t think others can teach you what you refuse to learn.

I’ve found this applies especially to my college courses. If I won’t learn the material yourself, I’ve already lost the battle, because I’m leaving it up to my teacher to teach me, when all he can do is reinforce what I already know. If I can’t learn it myself, I’ve got nothing.

“I will solve your problems.”

No you won’t. Only I can solve my problems. You can give me suggestions and new ideas, but only I can absorb and implement them. I can know the solutions to my problems without ever implementing them, and I’ll continue to have problems despite your solutions.

The real answer is that any form of growth or improvement requires hard work, both mental and physical. If you need to clean off your desk and organize your possessions to move to the next level, then you’re going to be doing a lot of thrashing about for a few hours (or days, depending on how much stuff you have). This is a part of growing. Personal development is not all in the mind, and other people cannot do it for you.

Blame others.

You can easily fall into the trap of blaming your mother for all your life’s short-comings, or “society,” or your boss, or your hometown, or your skin’s color. These are all traps. They feel like a warm bath because they relieve you of responsibility, but they’re about to turn into a boiling soup that cooks you alive in your own cowardice.

No, you can’t blame others. There are no ifs or buts, and you are not a special case. It may be painful, but in the long run, personal responsibility is always the better choice.

Change yourself, not your life.

You do have to change your life sometimes. If you’re tired of your parents bossing you around, don’t meditate upon it for six hours a day. Come up with a plan to get away from your parents. If you can’t do that, then you’ll have to be bossed around a bit longer.

All the wishful thinking in the world won’t touch the lives of others. Personal development is useless unless translated into action. It doesn’t have worldly power in the theoretical realm, despite our wishes.

One of the main goals of personal development is to give you clear directions, thoughts, and purpose. These are all “mind games,” but they make you invincible when taking decisive action. It took a lot of decisive action for me to get up at 6 A.M. and write this article. I could’ve easily slept longer or played video games or wasted time trying to find articles like this instead of writing. I did look for a few minutes, but it yielded nothing of value, so I immediately started writing (typing).

I wouldn’t have written this a year ago, not because I was incapable of it, but because my mind wasn’t sharp enough. I could have the idea, but the idea would be useless because I would go nowhere with it.

The purpose of personal development is to get your mind working with you so you can become an unstoppable force in implementing your worthy objectives. It’s not about blaming your parents or blaming your past or blaming society. It’s not about handing your keys over to others. It’s ten times better than psychology, because psychology is mostly crap (sorry to my psychologist readers :grin: ).

When you’re not living to your full potential, it’s very comforting to not hold authority over your life. This is why so many people enjoy fascism and want more of it in the United States. It tells them what to do. Unfortunately, when you are living to your full potential, it feels silly not to control your life.

Personal responsibility may make you sick to your stomach now, especially if you’ve squandered a couple decades to the whims of others. But this doesn’t mean you should give up power over the rest of your life. When you crash into a car or drive into a lake, you don’t give up driving for the rest of your life. Even if (God forbid) you kill another person, you still need to keep driving to go places, because driving gives you freedom like no other.

Buses can’t match the freedom driving provides, just as blaming others can’t match the freedom personal responsibility provides. When you’re aligned with your truest intentions, personal responsibility gives you unmatched strength.

Photo: Light the Way

Posted on by

Light the Way

A car with yellow headlights illuminates the road on a dark, cloudy evening.

This car had lights that were unusually colored. I bet they had a yellow filter over them, but they looked brighter than normal too.

For editing, I decided to go with really warm colors, much more so than the actual scene. It gives a better mood than bluish tones. Also, I dodged the ground to make it look like the headlights are brighter, while adding contrast and burning the corners to make the scene more eye-catching. Because I shot this at ISO400, I brought out a good bit of grain with the editing.

I borrowed a Sigma 105mm lens from a friend to take this and other photos, which I recently returned. It was a lot of fun to play with. I might have to buy my own if I can save up $400. It’s hard, being unemployed and all, but it’s so worth it. :cool:

Canon Rebel XTi, Sigma EF 105mm 1:2.8, 1/160, F2.8, 105mm, ISO400, 2008-09-04T19:41:01-04, 20080904-234101rxt

Location: Golf Ave., Ormond Beach, FL  32174

Download the high-res JPEG or download the source image.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Please credit me as “Photo by Richard Thripp” or something similar.

Wayne Bray

Posted on by

Wayne Bray has reformed and I have agreed to remove this page to help him and his family move on with their lives. The mistakes he made in the sports memorabilia business happened over 12 years ago and he deeply regrets them.

Photo: Fiery Hearts

Posted on by

Fiery Hearts

I had this idea of drawing a heart with a laser pointer. I set the camera up on a tripod, set the timer to ten seconds, and then drew this with the laser in the 3.2 seconds the picture was exposed.

Actually, it wasn’t easy like that. It took me 50 tries to get right. Have you ever tried to draw a heart on the wall with a laser pointer? I did two of them, and getting them to look anything like hearts, timed to 3.2 seconds, is quite a feat itself. This was the best I could do. I like the hearts—they look jagged, which is good because hearts aren’t perfect, nor is love. Perfection just doesn’t exist, and life would be boring if it did. The only perfect state is continuous personal growth; you can’t become perfect and then stagnate, wallowing in your perfection.

I drew the hearts on a window because the reflections on the glass turn up much brighter in the camera. In Photoshop, I brightened the laser trails and heart outline to make it more distinctive, while adding contrast and darkness to the surroundings. This was at ISO1600, so the end result is grainy and riddled with artifacts, but spirited nonetheless.

When your hearts meet, let them have fire!

Canon Rebel XTi, Sigma EF 105mm 1:2.8, 3.2″, F2.8, 105mm, ISO1600, 2008-09-06T02:26:48-04, 20080906-062648rxt

Location: Thripp Residence, Ormond Beach, FL  32174-7227

Download the high-res JPEG or download the source image.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Please credit me as “Photo by Richard Thripp” or something similar.

Photo: Lilac Dreams

Posted on by

Lilac Dreams

Lilac (purple) flowers at the Daytona State College campus. These aren’t lilacs, but I like the name so I’m using it to refer to the color.

A friend volunteered to let me borrow his lens: a Sigma EF 105mm 1:2.8. I have it till next week, so I’ve been taking pictures of stuff with the different perspective it offers. Everything’s so close; I can’t get any sort of landscapes with this. But it’s interesting to focus on the details, and I can get closer to flowers than I can with the kit lens.

While I take good care of my camera and lenses, one of the worries in borrowing a lens–or anything for that matter–is that it will break in your possession, or you’ll break it by accident. Breaking your own stuff isn’t so bad as breaking someone else’s stuff, because then you (generally) feel obligated to replace it. What happens more often is the lender will say you broke it when you didn’t. Or if anything goes wrong with it in a period of one month after you return it, the lender blames it on you. I’m not sure why this happens, but it seems to be a common human trait.

I believe it’s rooted in fear. We want a scapegoat for everything. People may even subconsciously lend items they know are about to break, just so they can blame the borrower when the inevitable happens. Obviously, this is something that you and me must work on overcoming. Most people are reasonable and down-to-Earth already; I don’t consider borrowing a lens from a friend high-risk. But, I don’t borrow by contract if it’s reasonable to buy the item instead. Contracts are bad because they’re generally with people you don’t know; it’s much better to lend an item to a friend on honor than to a stranger with the threat of law.

Borrowing is actually condemned in the Bible, and it’s not something people used to do commonly. You should borrow if you’re sure you’ll be able to produce a lot of value for the world from the loan. Unfortunately, this is very rare. Maybe one in ten-thousand loans comply with this stipulation. Borrowing (paying a mortgage) on a house is good, but too often people buy a house they can’t support. You should live beneath your means, because that’s the only way you can leverage your remaining wealth to contribute to the lives of others, effectively increasing your means. Living beneath your means does not include credit-card debt.

Editing on this photo involved adding contrast and vignetting. That bug on the left is interesting. I didn’t notice him till just now. He gets to stay, though.

Canon Rebel XTi, Sigma EF 105mm 1:2.8, 1/640, F5, 105mm, ISO100, 2008-09-03T13:03:40-04, 20080903-170340rxt

Location: Daytona State College, 1200 W. International Speedway Blvd., Daytona Beach, FL  32114

Download the high-res JPEG or download the source image.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Please credit me as “Photo by Richard Thripp” or something similar.

Your Blog is a Marching Wiki

Posted on by

When I think of a wiki, I think of a collection of articles that can be edited by anyone. But wikis have another core trait. If you’ve ever looked up an article on Wikipedia, you’ve noticed that practically every other word is a link to related articles in the wiki.

There are no direct links to external sites. All those are footnotes or references, appearing at the bottom of the page. But within the text, there are internal links all over the place. It’s a self-contained Internet.

I think your blog should be the same way. This isn’t reasonable until you’ve built up a good collection of content—perhaps thirty articles at least. But once you’ve done that, you should start linking to them whenever relevant. When I talk about artistic photography, I’ll link to my gallery, and when I talk about happiness, I’ll probably link to How to Be Happy. And when I talk about linking, darn it, I’ll link to The Perils of Redundant Linking. These links are redundant to people who read my whole blog from start to finish, but those people can just ignore the links. The larger majority skims two or three of my articles to take in the essential points, and for them, the links are invaluable, because they connect them with other subjects of interest. Because the links are contextual and manually added by me and me alone, they’re better and more relevant than what any search engine or group of people can offer.

I believe in subjective reality / multiple truths. Wikis are disconcerting because they try in vain to represent an objective reality by synthesizing and representing the beliefs of hundreds of people. Sometimes, it works, but within the whole wiki you always see incongruity. Certain articles read like advertisements, others are comical, others are dead serious. Some use weak language and weasel words like “may have,” “possibly,” and “back in the day,” while others try to be overly-precise, to the point of being inaccurate. I could say John Lennon was killed at 1980-12-08T22:52:52-05, and it would be very precise, but it wouldn’t be accurate. Even if I am accurate, my accuracy is unprovable. The point is, no two people have the same perspective on wording or accuracy. When you merge too many perspectives, you end up with a muddled mess. Sure, like Wikipedia, you can still be informative, but it’s nonetheless a mess. There’s room for someone else to come along with a clear vision and really share expertise with others. Committees don’t do this. One person alone, having synthesized the perspectives of the world in a way more congruent than any collection of people, shares knowledge more compelling and evolved than all else.

Your blog should be a marching wiki, meaning it marches forward without looking back. Ordinary wikis do not march. Old articles are constantly being revised, updated, and perfected. Many bloggers and photographers refuse to let go. They spend so much time revamping old stuff, they never create anything new. If you’re drafting a book, this is fine. But like publishing a book, I consider posting an article to my blog a singular act representing your beliefs and knowledge at a fixed point in time. Unless I find a typo, or a broken link, or I write something new that expounds heavily upon the topic, I don’t update the old post. When I update the old post, it’s just to correct those errors or add a link to the new post.

Substantially changing the content of old articles can be a good thing for your readers, but that doesn’t make it worthwhile. Your time is much better spent putting what you’ve learned into a congruent, fine-tuned, new work of art, rather than adding bells to an old piece. Rewriting your archives can even be a disservice to your readers, because those articles show your history and your beliefs at a previous point in time. Do you dare erase your past? Would you rewrite and dress up an essay from middle school for a college assignment? No—you’d write something new entirely, and it would be much more evolved than your old work.

If you strive for a faster pace of evolution in your persona and your writing, tending to your old work will seem as unusual as tracing your drawings from kindergarten. Sure, tracing your childhood sketches would garner you experience, but the experience of creating anew is far greater than dwelling in the past. Our time is limited in this life, so it is important to optimize our learning processes as far as possible.

Similarly, don’t go back to old articles to add links to new articles, unless it’s something really important. I’ve done it about ten times, and considering I’ve been blogging for eight months and have written hundreds of posts, that isn’t a lot. While I could go back to Investment and Efficiency and add a whole bunch of (relevant) links to newer work, including this article, it would actually distract my readers. Simply put, if I wanted to link to newer stuff in the older article, I would’ve written the newer stuff first. I didn’t, so the older stuff doesn’t need to reference the future.

When you establish yourself as a soldier on the march, you lift a great weight off your shoulders. No longer must you worry about maintaining continuity with the past. In fact, I encourage you to openly contradict your past—should it represent the evolution of your opinions, or a different perspective that is valuable to your readers. Don’t feel you have to explain yourself. Don’t write for the critics. Most people aren’t trying to shoot holes through your work; they want to share in the wealth of your knowledge. They’re just like you. It’s far more important to cater to the important people, rather than a vocal, critical minority.

Abandoning continuity is most important for beliefs, but also includes presentation. In some articles, I highlight key points in italics; in others I use bold. In my school essays, I underline. Sometimes I’ll use inline bold headings like this, while other times I’ll use large headings bounded by line breaks, which really draw the eye. In some articles, I highlight nothing, because everything is important. I don’t have to make a list of rules for myself to govern these processes. I do whatever feels right in the present context. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t match up exactly with my history.

Let your beliefs and standards be fluid like water, changing to meet the demands of different terrain, rather than rigid and inflexible like ice. Your important beliefs may turn to ice, but even ice can melt or break. If this happens, don’t resist it—recognize it as inevitable change: the only way to transcend your current level.

Finally, don’t create lists of rules for yourself. There are plenty of other people who are happy to do this for you; you don’t need even more rules. You are your own boss, and you control your own destiny.

Money and Love

Posted on by

What I made online, 2008-08

Just wanted to give you a little hint for how my websites did last month. My goal is $1 per day, and while I didn’t hit that every day last month, the overall total was $56.41, or $1.80 per day.

I can see I’m making a bigger impact on the world. In July, I made $20, so my income basically tripled last month. You can’t get that kind of raise with a regular job.

$53.73 was from Google AdSense; $2.68 was from this blog’s Amazon Associates commissions.

Of the $53.73, $1.54 came from Brilliant Photography and Personal Development by Richard X. Thripp. Th8.us made $2.30, DaytonaState.org made $42.63, and the Thripp.com users made me $7.26. Our hosting / domains bill is $15 per month, so I’m more than covered.

DaytonaState.org is targeted. A lot of people come from Google looking for information on enrolling in colleges, so the information appeals to them. On the other hand, Thripp.com is black-listed by Google, so this blog and others appear low in the search results. I haven’t done much marketing either, instead focusing on writing and producing new works of art, so that explains the low turnout. But in the long run, the richardxthripp.thripp.com is where the action is going to be.

If I was still working at the library, I would have made ten times more. But last month, I did no work. Even though I exhausted far more time and energy here, the energy comes back twofold. This simply isn’t a job at all to me.

When you’re doing something you love, it doesn’t matter how much time you “spend” or how much money you make. (You’re not really spending time; you’re saving it.) You’ll do it anyway, because it’s what you do. If you’re looking for something to love, photography is a good place to start, even as a freelancer. I wouldn’t do it myself; I’d prefer writing articles for free and making money indirectly. But every person enjoys different methods.

Also: when you love playing with LEGOs or battling in World of Warcraft, it still doesn’t matter, but the problem is you’re not helping anyone else. You think you’re doing what you love, but you just haven’t found what you truly love. When you combine ambition with a purpose that really makes an impact on people around you, you’ll find something you love far more than child’s play. It’s still play, but it’s play taken to the next level. You character has just reached level 100. He’s replaced hit points with love points.

Photo: Sunrays 6

Posted on by

Sunrays 6

Sunrays 6! W00t! :grin:

Saw this outside my door, so I ran out into the street snapping pictures. It’s amazing what pops up if you watch the sky every evening. These were the most impressive beams of light and darkness I’ve seen; I didn’t even have to edit much. I did a bit of dodging and burning, and added contrast with the curves tool, but that was it.

The light is good. Let the light guide you to courageously fulfilling your dreams and aspirations. But like any good sunset, your dreams are always on the move. I know that, because these sunrays disappeared just a few minutes after I found them.

Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/1600, F4, 28mm, ISO100, 2008-08-26T19:06:22-04, 20080826-230622rxt

Download the high-res JPEG or download the source image.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Please credit me as “Photo by Richard Thripp” or something similar.

More of the Sunrays series.

A Free Nation Has Free Money

Posted on by

The purpose of any good government is to protect the lives and property of the people. Property is money. Money must be solid. It must be free, in that it is independent of the nefarious deeds of plutocrats. It doesn’t matter how much free speech or free love you have. If you have no money, you have no property, and all your “freedoms” are worthless.

The Federal Reserve, masquerading as part of our government, bails out corporations that have gotten themselves far into debt. In theory, this protects the jobs of the people, because the corporation keeps going. How does the Federal Reserve do this? They print lots more money, backed by nothing, and give it to the corporation, making up for billions of accumulated debts. How do corporations like General Motors and Bear Stearns lose so much money? By becoming unprofitable, bureaucratic failures. Companies that should go out of business are propped up by the government. Every time they do this, our currency gets closer to worthless. An invisible tax is placed on the money in your bank, because its value declines progressively.

When you prop up failures, you bring down everyone else. Small businesses that are rightfully profitable get no help, while losers are supported by the public debt. The rich get richer, the poor (us) get poorer, and the middle class disappears as we turn into Soviet Russia.

We continue creating more and more money out of thin air to fund wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Georgia, Yemen, and more, all for the continual war on “terror.” We have troops in 100 countries, spread all over the world. This is all funded by the continual whoring of our dollar. We give China I.O.U.’s in exchange for billions of dollars in goods. What’s going to happen is that we won’t be able to pay them back, and then they’ll use their U.S. money to buy out our country from under us while our currency and bank accounts become completely useless.

This shouldn’t happen. A $20 bill is a piece of paper, just like a $20 bill from 1900. Only then, the bill was worth the equivalent of $1000 of my dollars. What happened? Our money is fake now. It has no link to gold. Private bankers, as part of the private company that controls our money (the Federal Reserve), can print any amount of money on a whim, devaluing our labor. Not just future labor. All the liquid wealth you’ve accumulated in your bank account shrinks at once. All your hard work over many years is taken away at once. And like saps, we all accept it.

What is the root cause of the financial failure of our businesses? A foreign policy which involves us bombing everything that moves, and terrible taxes which kill all good business. An example: owning a restaurant is one of the worst businesses to be in, because every department of the government gets a piece of you. 80% of your money goes toward government inspections and regulation fees. It’s hard to even cover your expenses, no matter how efficient you are.

When you have a feather-bedded, socialist government, the only businesses that can make it have to government-backed. They pay all these terrible fees, but are subsidized by tax dollars. Without government exemptions, the ordinary businessman can’t afford to start his own corporation. Have you seen what the taxes on a sole proprietorship are like these days?

Instead, we’re all relegated to serfdom working for companies like Wal-Mart. I must admit, Wal-Mart is about the most efficient and prudent company around. But they’re still part of our socialist government. The root cause is our fiat currency, our continual warring, and our meddling with the free market. It’s not a “free” market now. It isn’t a free market when you’re taxed at a rate of 90%. Even if you work under the table, you pay huge taxes. Sales tax is one. The rest is in prices that are three times higher than they should be, because every merchant along the way has to cover his tax burden by raising his prices. The United States is the Roman Empire, Part 2.

People are working harder than ever. It’s only because our wasteful government has completely failed us, just as Great Britain had failed our fore-fathers before their noble revolution. 40 years ago, a man could do good honest work and support his wife, several kids, a car, and a mortgage with money to spare. What happens now? Couples have to take out life-time mortgages and both work 50 hours a week in career jobs, leaving their kids to be raised by strangers. Still, they can barely pay the bills. Are they slacking off? Not in the slightest. The currency traders and international bankers get richer and richer while we slave away as pawns of the state.

Students have to work full-time while attending college just to make ends meet. My family can’t even keep a cool house or travel freely, because of the terrible cost of fuel. This isn’t because we as a people are running out of fuel or pillaging the environment. It’s because our money is becoming worthless. There’s plenty of gas to be had at $3.60 per gallon: there are no shortages. Considering gas was 85¢ a gallon in 2002, my money has lost three-fourths it’s value. Your four years of labor from the 90’s is worth one year of labor in 2008. How does that make you feel?

Our technology and collective intellect keeps getting better, but we keep having to work harder and smarter for ever-smaller gains. If innovation had stood still since the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, we’d be working for two cents a day by now. It’s only the unwavering American spirit of growth and progress that has secured what little we have now. War, fear, fake money, and martial law isn’t American. This is supposed to be the home of the brave, remember?

A free nation starts with a currency backed by gold, and a market backed by the success of its marketeers. Not the government. The government cannot fight wars nor grant rights. Only God can. The government can only protect or usurp your rights. By usurping your labor, the U.S. government is usurping your rights and your livelihood. It has to stop. It will stop when our government falls and our money is worse less than toilet paper. Only then will people see the truth, but all will be lost and we’ll have to start anew. I’m already getting ready.

For now, stay below the radar. We’re losing our freedoms by the minute. The police are not on your side. Don’t get stuck with a heavy mortgage, keep your mouth shut if the IRS calls you, and don’t pay taxes that you don’t have to pay. Don’t join the army, and if you’re turning eighteen, stay off their list. Don’t vote for Obama or McCain because they’re both identical. A vote for Mickey Mouse is better. Don’t keep too much worthless money lying around. Go back to bartering if you have to. And most of all, foster a spirit of peaceful, nonviolent resistance to government oppression, just as Gandhi wanted.