Mind Control - Predictive Programming

Predictive Programming is the practice of saying something is going to happen (predicting) enough times that people assume it will without question.

Once they have accepted this future event as a fait accompli their behaviors fall in line accordingly.

The best example of predictive programming is in religion. Religions will often have various prophecies of an impending future event.  The prophecy will either be mentioned in a scripture or by a religious leader and is to be accepted in good faith.

If the prophecy predicts something foreboding and calamitous the appropriate behaviors  can be recommended to either forestall the event or prepare for it.  These behaviors include

• Give money
• Stockpile weapons
• Isolate oneself for the non-believers
• Pray for a change
• Build a bunker to protect oneself and family
• Think only pure thoughts
• Act only in ways that are deemed appropriate

The list goes on. It is safe to say that when fear of an impending event is programmed into someones mind anything that can relieve that fear will be acted upon.

Predictive programming can be implemented for positive events as well but the resulting behaviors will tend to have less urgency.

Examples of Predictive Programming

The Apocalypse – Many religions and subcultures promote the idea of a large and unspeakable “end of the world as we know it”.  This has been predicted throughout recorded history and has yet to be documented to have happened.

The Rapture – This is an example of a positive event where souls will be taken to heaven and saved.

Dec 21st, 2012  of the Mayan Calendar – The reality is that this date marks the end of cycle of the Mayan Calendar but how it has been interpreted and justified varies.  Some predict the Earth’s axis will change it’s rotation in spite of this being a violation of all the laws of physics.  Nonetheless, they are selling everything from books to real estate using this belief.

How to Use Predictive Programming to Control Others

The steps to implementing predictive programming for your own benefit are as follows.

1. Determine the resulting behavior you want from others.
2. Decide what emotion would best motivate that behavior.
3. Decide what impending event would best create that emotion.
4. Provide evidence that such an impending event will occur.
5. Make every individual involved understand that they are central figures in how this event will transpire.
6. Repeat it often and with urgency.

An example of using this formula would be a company leader who wants to increase production for a period of time.  As leader he would announce that the company is on the verge of filing bankruptcy and laying off all it’s employees but there exists a slim chance of hope.  This chance is dependent on each employee performing their job even better.  When addressing this to his subordinates he would emphasize both the positive and the negative aspects of this situation.
The negative is obvious: poverty, loss and ruin.
The positive includes the continued prosperity of the each person and the company but also should emphasize the wonderful vision and mission of the company and that they would continue in this if they just do a little bit better.

Mind Control - The Occupy YOURSELF movement

A peaceful revolution is occurring
People are uniting around the world
The Occupy Movement is growing.

Today - We send a powerful message:
WE SHUT THE SYSTEM DOWN.

For one day we peacefully protest in a symbol that will be felt across the globe.

We step out of the economic system and we spend a day to step back into ourselves.

Some Guidelines

1) A 24 hour television blackout where all participants willfully keep their tubes turned off. If enough people participate, this could cost corporations millions in lost revenue.

2) A 24 hour retail boycott where all participants agree to refrain from buying any merchandise not directly associated with basic needs, such as food and medicine.

3) A 24 hour employment walkout where participants refuse to attend work, with the exception of emergency services.

4) It has been suggested and bears repeating, all bank accounts that are not absolutely necessary should be closed. If you must retain a bank account, switch to a credit union or smaller locally owned bank.

Others have suggested - turning off all lights, unplug all the plugs or shut off power to your home even.
Don't use your TV, radio, internet or even the phone.
Don't buy -anything- and if there are services you've been thinking about cancelling. Today's a good day to do it.
Call in sick to work.  

Basically do your best to do NOTHING that generates money into THE SYSTEM.

Send a message & unite!

Most importantly, for one day, give yourself the gift of inner reflection, without distraction. Take time to read a book or meditate. Play games or have conversations with loved ones. Work on a creative project, alone or as a family.

Today or tomorrow or.... whenever!
Step out of the system and get back to yourself. Turn off the economic powers and empower yourself!

Spread the word!
SHUT IT ALL DOWN!

*Note, if for whatever reason, you decide you do not wish to participate in this fully. Do your best to do what you can do. The less you put into the system tomorrow the better. Participating half way is still better than not participating at all!

Mind Control - The World That Was Built On Sex

I found this awesome article ... and a bunch of other from this great blog:
http://delusiondamage.com/2011/10/26/the-world-that-was-built-on-sex/

The people of ancient civilizations knew that theirs wasn’t the only (or perhaps even the best) way to live. Fledgling civilizations were surrounded on all sides by people living the old, tribal way – hunting and gathering their food, living out their lives in a day-to-day manner and not building pyramids to vengeful sun gods.

Compared to the life of a farmer or pyramid-builder on the lower rungs of a civilization’s hierarchy, that could certainly have an appeal.

While crowding of certain geographical areas necessitated the hard work of farming in order to extract enough food from the land, it also planted the seeds of its own destruction – the more crowded it got, the harder one had to work to survive, and the more tempting it became to wander off into the unknown in search of greener pastures.

Knowing that one could take off into the wild, provide a comfortable life for oneself there and serve no king, who would voluntarily choose a life of hard work and servitude for little if any reward? It almost seems a minor miracle that the ancient civilizations ever came to be at all.

The powers of tradition, fear of change and of the unknown, and of religious mind control demanding obedience could not keep a civilization’s grunt laborers in line forever – with the alluring prospect of a nicer and easier life waiting in the jungle, the existence of civilization was always in a precarious balance, and if and when its hold on the minds of its people finally slipped for a moment, a civilizational breakdown could get going that became impossible to stop.

People would abandon their cities and go back to the old tribal ways as soon as they realized that they could. They felt no burning need to keep civilization going at all costs.

Not like we do.

Our civilization – which is in its current form, for the intents and purposes that matter, a global one based on the religion of consumerism as preached by the Church of Hollywood and Madison Ave. – is rather unique in its insistence that civilization must go on at any cost. Not many of today’s consumers would volunteer to go back to living in nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes (even if it were possible for six billion people to do that, which it isn’t). We are today so far removed from that life that it seems impossible to us. We need our TV and microwave meals and cell phones too much to picture ourselves being happy without them.

And that’s not the only thing that’s changed…

A prerequisite of civilization is that young men must be somehow motivated to do more work than is the bare minimum needed to survive. It’s easy to forget in the age of office work and factory production that building a civilization with stone age technology, farming the food and constructing the stone cities tourists can still gawk at today, is hard physical work. Too hard for most people.

Neither children nor the elderly can do it. Nor can women, especially when saddled with children. Only young men have the surplus capacity for labor necessary to do something extra in addition to providing for their own survival. It is the labor of young men that keeps the women, children and old men alive in a hunter-gatherer tribe, and it is the surplus labor of young men that is required in order to build a civilization.

Those young men need some sort of motivation, and the best motivation is the one thing young men care more about than anything else.

Sex.

Without marriage, the age of global civilization would perhaps never have come. In a tribe, sexual opportunities are not great. The high-status guys would get almost all the action. According to genetic studies, only 40% of tribal men would ever reproduce. In an age completely devoid of contraception, it’s fair to say that means the other 60% were having pretty much no sex at all.

That deserves repeating: in a tribe, the average man would not be having sex at all.

Celibacy was the norm. Many early civilizations would not change this – the god-king at the top would have huge harems, the ruling classes under him would get some chicks as well, but the grunt workers would remain just as celibate as they had been in tribal times.

A civilization with universal marriage, however, could offer a young man something he might easily consider worth all the hard work he was able to do – a wife of his very own. Now that was something the masses of young men would work for.

Marriage is the tool by which labor can be extracted from young men, and those civilizations which could promise a young man a wife of his own would have the opportunity to grow, gain ground and people from the tribal way of life, and eventually combine into the worldwide McDonald’s-civilization of today.

Marriage is at its core an incentive program – and the incentive is sex. You work hard, you earn what you need to be seen as a “respectable” enough man to marry, and you get it.

But it’s been a long time since the stone age, and some ideas that perhaps should not have been forgotten have been lost.

We’ve gotten used to the idea that civilization is the right way to live and that tribal living is not cool… and lately, we’re getting more and more used to the idea that sex is available for free, without marriage and without all that hard work. You don’t need to be “respectable” to get laid any more.

And therein lies the seed of what could be the undoing of our civilization.

Knowing that one could work just a little bit at some low-level unskilled job, earn just enough to eat, and spend one’s free time enjoying the sexual buffet that is the 21st century Western city, who would voluntarily choose a life of hard work and marriage for relatively little reward? It almost seems a minor miracle that our civilization keeps going at all.

That miracle is dependent on our keeping a quickly spreading secret…

Mind Control - 10 WORST PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENTS

This was sent to me from http://www.onlinedegree.net/10-worst-public-service-announcements/.
It's funny and amusing. 

~Dantalion Jones

It's easy to make a mediocre public service announcement. Just work with a small budget, hire some average actors, and provide a message that most people have already heard. Most PSAs leave a small impression on the viewer, even if it's just because they're reinforcing an idea, but it takes a real talent to make a seriously terrible public service announcement. These 10 commercials aimed at raising awareness about different plights of our society have really raised the bar for bad acting, poorly executed ideas, and pushing the envelope a little past good taste.

1. Real Children Don't Bounce Back
If you thought you'd never hear a laugh track during a child abuse awareness ad, you were wrong. The producers of this public service announcement found a way to show child abuse on-screen, but the combination of a cartoon child in a live-action world and brutal abuse paired with goofy noises is off-putting to say the least. The animated boy's very real father hits him, throws things at him, flings him against the wall, and puts a cigarette out on his head, all before tossing him down the stairs where he becomes a real kid. The light-hearted take on such a serious problem is disturbing, as is the image of the poor cartoon boy soiling himself out of fear. The PSA makes its point, but how many children and dumb adults did it confuse in the process? Laugh tracks normally mean the content is funny, and this is no laughing matter.


2. Prevent It workplace safety PSA
Maybe it makes sense that people who are watching people get their teeth knocked out in a hockey game would only be affected by shocking PSAs, but this Canadian ad for workplace safety is surprisingly horrifying. There were several different commercials that made up the campaign that played during Hockey Night In Canada and kept children everywhere from ever wanting to get a job. Even working retail is dangerous! The point of the ad is to show that you have to be careful and follow safety procedures at work, but the underlying message is that death, or at least disfigurement, is lurking around every corner. There was obviously no better way to show this to viewers than to demonstrate the way the oil from a deep fryer will melt your face off or the manner in which you might be impaled if you drive a forklift.


3. Mr. McGregor sexual abuse PSA
This PSA is guaranteed to make you squirm, because not only does it feature an adorable little boy telling the story of how he was sexually abused, it makes you watch him act it out. The kid explains that he goes to a home daycare after school because his mom works late. Mr. McGregor, the husband of the babysitter, sometimes chooses a special boy to help him out in his workshop. You'll groan as you watch Mr. McGregor guide the boy's hands on the saw and gently unbutton the kid's shirt. You might cover your eyes when Mr. McGregor spills paint on the child and makes him take off his clothes. And you'll want to die when the little boy describes, without euphemisms or dancing around the subject, how Mr. McGregor touched his penis. You may know more about sexual abuse after watching this, but you'll also view old men a lot differently.

Creepy Sexual Abuse PSA - watch more funny videos

4. Smoke-Free Grads by 2000
Some seriously awful PSAs come from Canada. This one attempts to keep kids from smoking cigarettes throughout their time in school, an undeniably worthy cause, but leaves the viewer wanting to take up smoking just to avoid being associated with this campaign. An alien bear arrives on earth with his rock band to deliver a moderately catchy, incredibly annoying message through song. The kids in the video join in the song, ensuring that it gets stuck in your head, and then get hold of some cigarettes just so they can break them in half. Obviously no one ever told them how expensive those things are or what they could buy you in prison. The worst message of this PSA is that if a bully tries to pressure you to smoke and you break his cigarette, he'll pat you on the back, when in reality, he would at least stuff you in your locker.


5. Nightmare on Drug Street
Instead of leaving kids in the dark about how to do crack, this public service announcement (that was actually part of a short TV series about the consequences of drugs) basically spells it out for you. "This is crack, and this is what you smoke it with," one of the bad kids explains. Little Eddie does crack a couple of times, collapses on the floor, and eventually ends up in a juvenile detention center. It's hard to tell whether this is punishment for the drugs (which he was only trying as a scientist) or for the kids' plan to build a nuclear bomb for the science fair. The real lesson of the commercial comes when the viewer learns about all the awful things in juvey -- most notably that there's no junk food and that your little brother isn't there to steal your underwear.


6. Dunkelziffer sexual abuse PSA
After watching this PSA, you'll probably wonder what the producers were thinking and what exactly they wanted that tentacle to resemble. This seriously creepy ad will haunt your dreams and probably make you do the opposite of what the producers want you to do. Who wants to hang around long enough to help a person who is always followed by a hairy, phallic tentacle? You'll get the point: sexual abuse is scarring and interferes with every phase of a person's life. But there has to be a far less creepy way to depict the influence of abuse than to show a fleshy, headless snake slithering up the legs of an elderly woman. This is a German PSA, so maybe it'd be wise to stay away from the TV if you're traveling abroad because even a language barrier won't save you from this one.


7. VD Is For Everybody
If you didn't know what VD was before watching this public service announcement, you would probably conclude it was something relatively happy, like insurance or a community grocery store. Not once do you hear that VD stands for venereal disease or learn about its symptoms or how it's contracted. The nice waltz music leads you to believe that the people they are showing -- a violinist, the librarian, a baby -- are living fulfilling lives and would be further enriched by the addition of VD. You're not even tipped off that the thing they're advertising might be health related until the announcer tells you to go to the pharmacy or talk to a doctor. Where some PSAs go too far with the scare-us-straight philosophy, this one doesn't even approach the subject.


8. Pee-wee Herman anti-crack PSA
Pee-wee Herman isn't exactly someone you would want to take advice from on how to be cool. And Paul Reubens himself would end up being a terrible role model for the kids he was telling how to live. He had been arrested in 1971 outside an adult theater and in 1983, around the time the PSA aired, he was arrested for possession of marijuana. It's not quite crack, but it's still an illegal drug. A decade or so after the public service announcement, he was arrested for indecent exposure in an adult theater and again in 2002 for child pornography. Add in the fact that one of Reubens' biggest non-Pee-wee roles was that of a drug dealer in the movie Blow and you've got one meaningless anti-drug PSA.


9. The Situation and Bristol Palin safe sex PSA
If there's anyone in the world that you don't want our youth taking sex advice from, it's Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino from Jersey Shore and Sarah Palin's daughter, Bristol. The Situation is notorious for bringing home different girls every night (or sometimes multiple girls in the same night) and having his friends take the "grenade" or ugly one. That sounds like a guy with a healthy respect for women and sex. Bristol was a teen mom who now advocates abstinence. Even if you didn't know the back stories of the two, their interaction in the PSA is totally unbelievable and the acting would make you think they're not actors at all. Oh, they're not? Then have someone else deliver the important message.


10. Joanna Cassidy and Smokey the Bear
Smokey the Bear is a lovable figure from our childhood, but most would agree that the animated version of Smokey is far less creepy than the man-in-a-Smokey-suit version with a mouth that barely moves. If bad Smokey was the only thing wrong with this commercial, it would have been forgotten as another low-quality PSA, but it gets worse. The producers of the forest-fire prevention ad recruited Starsky and Hutch actress Joanna Cassidy to deliver the message, and while she's attractive, she appears to be heavily sedated or about to seduce someone. Then the traumatic part happens: she removes her face. Viewers are subjected to the sight of her skin and teeth coming off and revealing that she was weird Smokey all along. The moral of this ad: don't start a forest fire because Smokey the Bear could be lurking underneath the skin of someone you love.

Mind Control - Fun with Conspiracy Theorists

http://www.craveonline.com

Rules I Just Made Up - Fun with Conspiracy Theorists

Put down the William Cooper book, drop that Loose Change dvd and check out these five rules for screwing with conspiracy theorists.

By Devin O'Neill

Many peoples' first instinct when encountering a too-paranoid 9/11 truther or an obsessive Illuminati alarmist is to shut them down immediately or to turn tail and run. I do neither. If you play it right, you're in for hours of free entertainment, and it's cheaper than a movie.

1. THIS IS ABOUT THEM, NOT ABOUT YOU

The first thing you learn when you hang out with hardcore conspiracy theorists is that they are the focal point of the universe. The government is after them, they're monitored while they piss, the lizard people have implanted nanobots in their brain, and in their piss, and they've taught themselves to drink their own piss, in preparation for the coming apocalypse, which is how the nanobots got into their brain. This is all information you can use. How? By asking questions that play into that paranoia. "Hey, isn't it strange that… Have you ever noticed… Did you ever think about who…" Make sure to relate every meaningless coincidence you can think of to both the threat of a global totalitarian government AND to what they ate for dinner yesterday. Make it personal. They love both the sense of danger and the attention, and everybody loves a curious audience, especially an egomaniac with a messiah complex.

2. EVERYONE IS DUMBER THAN THEM

This is a corollary of number one. An elaborate international conspiracy with cosmos-altering consequences would be very difficult to hide, yet nobody on the street is freaking out. Why? They only ever give one explanation: everyone is clearly stupid. Never mind the fact that the theorist in question survives almost entirely on TV dinners and Mountain Dew and that this is probably affecting his judgment. Besides, we all know about the mind-control chemicals in tap water. Mountain Dew is safer. To rev his motor, either A: join in bashing everyone but the two of you as mindless, television-numbed drones or B: play dumb, and allow him to "educate" you. Be warned: approach B will inspire so much irradiating smugness that you may be tempted to punch said theorist in his nanobot-infested nuts. You'll really know you're thumbing the button if he uses the word "sheeple".

3. THERE'S ALWAYS AN EXPLANATION

The conspiracy theorist is master of what I like to call the "rolling justification": any new data is conveniently incorporated into a giant, byzantine plot that explains why the FBI is responsible for the marketing of Doritos or whatever. All his neighbors bought new lawnmowers? Dorito conspiracy. Eggo recalled a whole batch of waffles? Dorito conspiracy. The trick is to keep this rolling justification going. Feed him new Orwellian nightmares that fit conveniently into the ones he's just conjured from the twisted depths of his fevered mind, but don't connect all the dots-- let him do some. He will experience a brief, cocaine-like high, and the impression that he's smarter than you will be strengthened-- he figured it out, not you. This can only be good for his savior complex, and saviors preach. Grab some popcorn.

4. FEED THE FIRE WITHOUT PUTTING IT OUT

Though you need to keep provoking him, you have to be careful not to seem either too contrary or too over-enthusiastic. If you're too over-the-top, he'll think you're patronizing him or he'll get jealous. Too argumentative, and he'll lump you in with the "sheeple". The key is a sort of dazed, slightly stupid fascination seasoned with bursts of excited intelligence. That way, you're learning from him. You're "just smart enough" to be his pupil, his padawan, his grasshopper. I know, I know. Try to contain your vomit.

5. DON'T BE TOO GOOD AT THIS

You always run the risk, if you manipulate the situation smoothly, that you'll seem too thorough a master of the intricacies of the Doritos conspiracy. Like you know a few too many secret chemtrail ingredients. Like you have too firm a handle on the latest UFO cover-up. If you manage to follow and fuel his rhetoric over-expertly, your hyper-paranoid prey may accuse YOU of anthraxing his Cheetos. Congratulations: you are now a member of the Illuminati. Intellectually impaired basement-dwellers everywhere are massing against you. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Mind Control - How To Create A Hypnotic Killer

Derren with Chris, his unwitting trained assassin. 

http://mindcontrolwiki.com/assassin-protocol/

On October 21st 2011 BBC Channel 4 air a program featuring Hypnotist and Magician, Derren Brown. The aim of the program was to see if a healthy, mentally stable person could programmed to kill by means of hypnosis.

The conclusion shows a generally kind and healthy young man becoming a hypnotic assassin. The assassination attempt took place in public against a public figure. The assassination was designed to happen completely without the subjects knowledge and to have no memory of performing the assassination. In other words, the goal was to create a perfect hypnotic assassin.

Thankfully, because this was to be a BBC broadcast and Derren Brown has a sense of ethics, measures were taken so that no one was actually harmed during the production.

Out of this broadcast I will attempt to dissect and extrapolate a protocol to create just such a hypnotic killer.

Click here to find out more:
http://mindcontrolwiki.com/assassin-protocol/

Mind Control - 10 Marketing Gimmicks Gone Wrong

Here is proof the modern commercial mind control (aka Marketing) is not as easy as it might seem. 

http://www.businessinsurance.org/10-marketing-gimmicks-gone-wrong/

Companies are like insecure teenage girls: they want your money and will do almost anything for attention. Most corporations have better marketing strategists than teenagers, and come up with creative publicity stunts that reach a wide audience and promote their brand. Every once in while, though, you find a gimmick that must've sounded good in the pitch meetings but ended up totally backfiring. Here are 10 marketing stunts that didn't go according to plan.

1. Aqua Teen Hunger Force bomb scare

   Boston has a high enough profile that it could reasonably be the target of a terrorist attack, and citizens and authorities are right to be cautious if they see a potential threat. Of course, Cartoon Network and its parent company, Turner Broadcasting, didn't consider this fact when they launched a guerrilla marketing campaign for the late-night animated show, Aqua Teen Hunger Force. They hung small electronic circuit boards that displayed light-up depictions of the show's characters, and they thought bridges in the busy commercial district in Boston would be the perfect place for their pseudo-ads to be seen. And people did see them; a train passenger, seeing the board and wires sticking out, mistook them for bombs. She notified police, who blew up one of the devices and shut down highways and two bridges. Once the stunt was understood for what it was, two men were arrested for placing a hoax device and for disorderly conduct.

2. Casa Sanchez tattoos

   The Sanchez family, who owns a taqueria in California, seriously underestimated the appeal of their burritos — or the lengths people will go to get free food. When the restaurateurs put a sign in the window of Casa Sanchez offering free lunch for life to anyone who would tattoo its logo on themselves, they didn't think anyone would take it seriously. But people did. A few inked customers turned into 40 fans sporting the tattoos. And then the owners did the math. If those people took full advantage of their lifetime commitment, coming in for an $8 lunch every day for 50 years, it would cost the restaurant $5.8 million. After running those astounding numbers, the Sanchez family decided to cap the number of people who could get the deal at 50, and interview potential life-time customers to see how hungry they seemed. The logo, in case you were wondering, is a little boy in a sombrero riding an ear of corn that looks like a rocket ship.

3. Hold Your Wee for a Wii radio contest

   Radio stations are notorious for coming up with crazy contests to hook listeners and get publicity. KDND 107.9 in California thought they could get a little buzz for a contest where people would see how much water they could drink without going to the bathroom. They called it "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" and planned to give the winner the video game system. They got a lot more buzz than they anticipated, though, when a contestant died from water intoxication. She had been the runner-up in the contest, and complained of her head hurting when she quit. Ten employees at the radio station, including the hosts of the show during which the contest aired, were fired. The woman's husband won a $16.5 million case against the station.

4. Snapple popsicle meltdown

   Everybody loves to hear about new world records, the stranger the better. Snapple, the juice and tea company, thought that breaking a weird record as appetizing as World's Largest Popsicle would be the perfect marketing stunt. They created the popsicle, 35,000 pounds and 25 feet tall, out of kiwi-strawberry Snapple, and shipped it in a freezer truck to Times Square in New York where they planned to erect it. Despite all the careful preparation, the marketing team chose the first day of summer, when the temperature hit a balmy 80 degrees, to pull off this stunt. As the crane started to raise the giant popsicle, pink liquid rushed out, covering the street in sticky Snapple juice. The officials called off the attempt to stand the popsicle upright fearing that the structure had been compromised and would collapse, and fire trucks cleaned up the mess.

5. Balloon Boy

   It's not often that you find a family that tries something outrageous just to get publicity, but in 2009, TVs across America were tuned in to watch the Heene family worry about their son who was flying through the air in a homemade helium balloon. Richard and Mayumi Heene called up authorities when the family's balloon was released and they feared their six-year-old was inside. Eventually, the boy turned up and said he was hiding in the attic. But in an interview for Larry King Live, Falcon Heene said his parents had told him they were doing this for the show, meaning the reality show they hoped their publicity would inspire. The family wasn't offered a TV deal, and both adult Heenes received jail time for the hoax.

6. JMP Creative crane stunt

   When your CEO is a former magician, you know the publicity stunts are going to be crazy. Jim McCafferty decided to start a marketing company, JMP Creative, and wanted to kick it off with something spectacular. And if you want something done right, you should do it yourself. McCafferty got someone to put him in a straightjacket, close him in a steel cage, and then lift him up 300 feet in the air with a crane. The CEO was supposed to escape the cage within a certain amount of time before it dropped to the ground. He didn't quite make it out in time and had plummeted 60 feet before being able to attach himself to a harness and avoid death. He did have second-degree rope burns, though, which had to be treated at a hospital. The gimmick apparently got someone's attention, and the company is now worth millions of dollars.

7. Edison's elephant

   Today when animals are put down, it's normally done in a fairly humane way. But in 1903, things were a little different. One zoo decided it needed to get rid of its elephant, Topsy, after she had killed three of her handlers. When zoo officials thought electrocution might be the best method, Thomas Edison jumped at the opportunity. He had been in a feud with George Westinghouse and Nicola Tesla over whether their alternating current, or AC, was better than his direct current, DC. To prove that AC was dangerous, Edison used it to doom Topsy, and made it a public event. Fifteen-hundred people showed up and Edison filmed the execution. Today we all use AC anyway, and though we remember Edison, it's definitely not in association with this tasteless exhibition.

8. Molson partying campaign

   College kids may enjoy getting drunk and going wild, but their parents certainly don't appreciate corporations encouraging it. So when Molson Coors Brewing Co. in Canada started a contest aimed at university students (many of whom are too young to drink) that seemed to reward the most drunken, outrageous parties, many college officials and community members were concerned. The campaign, which attempted to use social media to reach one of the company's target audiences, asked students to upload their craziest party pictures to Facebook to compete for the title of Canada's top party school. The winner would be sent on a trip to Cancun with four friends. Molson ended up scrapping the contest after public backlash. That probably isn't the end of drunk college kids, though. Sorry, Canada.

9. Cocaine energy drink

   If you want your product to get attention, just name it after an illegal substance. That's what the makers of Cocaine, an energy drink, discovered. The beverage doesn't contain any cocaine, but it does have a ton of caffeine, more than its competitors Red Bull and Rockstar. The makers didn't have much money for advertising so they chose the controversial name and let angry politicians and talk show hosts do the work for them for free. Legal trouble was a bit more than they had bargained for, though. The FDA made the manufacturers take Cocaine off the shelves because it was "illegally marketing the drink as both a street drug alternative and a dietary supplement." The makers renamed the drink "No Name" for a while to put it back on shelves, but it is supposedly back in stores now — with lots of warnings about how dumb you have to be to believe the drink contains cocaine.

10. Pontiac's Oprah giveaway

    We've all heard about the show where Oprah Winfrey gave every member of her studio audience a brand new car, but most of us probably don't remember that they got Pontiac G6 sedans. GM, the company that owns Pontiac, donated the 276 cars to the show, but most of the credit went to Oprah who had nothing to do with acquiring them. At $21,000 per vehicle, the cars alone cost GM about $5.8 million. Add in administrative costs and GM officials say the gimmick cost somewhere around $8 million. It's not that it was a bad marketing technique; the publicity just didn't go to the company that put up all the cash. Oprah is probably very thankful, though, since this giveaway made people love her even more than they did before.

Mind Control - Forgetting is part of memory

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-forgetting-is-part-of-remembering.html

It's time for forgetting to get some respect, says Ben Storm, author of a new article on memory in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "We need to rethink how we're talking about forgetting and realize that under some conditions it actually does play an important role in the function of memory," says Storm, who is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

"Memory is difficult. Thinking is difficult," Storm says. Memories and associations accumulate rapidly. "These things could completely overrun our life and make it impossible to learn and retrieve new things if they were left alone, and could just overpower the rest of memory," he says.

But, fortunately, that isn't what happens. "We're able to get around these strong competing inappropriate memories to remember the ones we want to recall." Storm and other psychological scientists are trying to understand how our minds select the right things to recall—if someone's talking about beaches near Omaha, Nebraska, for example, you will naturally suppress any knowledge you've collected about Omaha Beach in Normandy.

In one kind of experiment, participants are given a list of words that have some sort of relation to each other. They might be asked to memorize a list of birds, for example. In the next part of the test, they have to do a task that requires remembering half the birds. "That's going to make you forget the other half of the birds in that list," Storm says. That might seem bad—it's forgetting. "But what the research shows is that this forgetting is actually a good thing."

People who are good at forgetting information they don't need are also good at problem solving and at remembering something when they're being distracted with other information. This shows that forgetting plays an important role in problem solving and memory, Storm says.

There are plenty of times when forgetting makes sense in daily life. "Say you get a new cell phone and you have to get a new phone number, do you really want to remember your old phone number every time someone asks what your number is?" Storm asks. Or where you parked your car this morning—it's important information today, but you'd better forget it when it comes time to go get your car for tomorrow afternoon's commute. "We need to be able to update our memory so we can remember and think about the things that are currently relevant."

Mind Control - 9 People With Awful Things Named After Them

http://www.toponlinecolleges.com/blog/2011/9-people-with-awful-things-named-after-them/


Many people work their entire lives to find a way to keep their names alive long after they've died. Some have buildings named after them, others get national holidays, and many just hope their children will carry on the family name and not do anything too stupid. But a few unlucky souls have their names permanently associated with something horrible, whether it's an unsavory crime or crippling disorder. These nine people probably had something else in mind when they thought about the legacy they'd leave behind.

Charles Lynch: The mention of the term "lynching" makes everyone a little uncomfortable today because of its racist undertones and a history most of us would like to forget. But the act of revenge (or justice, as some saw it) outside of the law used to be so much a part of daily life, that Charles Lynch didn't mind the practice being named after him. Lynch was a Virginia citizen during the time of the American Revolution who headed up an unauthorized court to try people who were loyal to the British government. The punishment came to be called "lynching" or "lynch law." Only later would it be associated with hanging and the torment of African Americans.

Alois Alzheimer: There's nothing worse than people weeping at the sound of your name, but many doctors and scientists who have made contributions to the field of medicine get the questionable honor of having a disease named after them. Alois Alzheimer certainly got a doozy of a disease. Alzheimer, a psychiatrist and neuropathologist, observed and researched the first case of presenile dementia, which would later be known as Alzheimer's disease. A 51-year-old woman was behaving strangely and experiencing short-term memory loss. When she died in 1906, Alzheimer studied her brain and was able to provide evidence of the plaques and tangles that appeared there.

Jules Léotard: If you've ever been stuck in a ballet class or forced to watch unattractive dancers bounce around, you know the torture of Jules Léotard's invention. Léotard was a French acrobat who helped develop the trapeze arts in the 19th century. He of course needed clothing that wouldn't get in his way while performing life-threatening feats (and he probably didn't want his pants to fall off, either). His solution was the leotard, a one-piece, form-fitting item of clothing that made him a real crowd-pleaser with the ladies who came to watch him. Today, leotards can be a blessing or a curse for viewers, depending on who's wearing them.

Daniel Elmer Salmon: Kids everywhere who are denied raw cookie dough by their moms have Daniel Elmer Salmon to blame — or at least his name, which he lent to the nasty bacteria, salmonella. Salmon was a scientist who studied animal diseases for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 1885, his research assistant was the first to discover and isolate a strain of the microorganisms, and he named it after Salmon. You can't help but wonder, though, whether this was a compliment or a jab at Salmon's managerial style. Salmonella, often found in raw eggs, can make you really sick if it's consumed in large doses or by very young or very old people.

Gary Larson: The creator of The Far Side comic strips was just strange enough to be considered a fitting namesake for a bug. A blood-sucking owl louse, to be exact, was named for the author and humorist — strigiphilus garylarsoni. Entomologists, those weird guys that study bugs, thought Larson deserved the honor because of his ability to get inside an insect's head and tell a joke from its point of view. The Gary Larson louse is a chewing louse found on owls and it survives by cementing itself to the bird and living off its blood. Most people probably wouldn't want to be associated with parasitic lice, but Larson says he was honored.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch: When Leopold von Sacher-Masoch first wrote about the pleasure of receiving pain, or masochism, everyone believed it was a purely fictitious story, but years later, it was revealed that the author himself probably suffered from the sexual abnormality. In his novel, Venus in Furs, Sacher-Masoch wrote about a relationship between a young man and a widow, where the young man becomes her slave in order to fuel his infatuation with her. She degrades him and treats him progressively worse, and he apparently likes it. The story is based on bizarre events in Sacher-Masoch's real life, making him the original masochist.

Diogenes of Sinope: Diogenes Syndrome is what you might discover when you turn on an episode of Hoarders. Diogenes of Sinope was an ancient Greek philosopher around the same time as Plato. Diogenes rejected conventional life and pulled a lot of stunts to demonstrate his philosophies. The syndrome that bears his name is also called senile squalor syndrome and is marked by self-neglect, squalor in the home, withdrawal, and compulsive hoarding. The name is thought by many to be insulting to the philosopher who didn't exhibit the symptoms of the disorder, but considering Diogenes slept in a bathtub in the marketplace, urinated on people he didn't like, and did a few other inappropriate things in public, he deserves some kind of memorial as someone who doesn't fit in well with society.

Mickey Finn: Girls are often warned to watch their cups when at a bar or party so that no one will "slip a mickey," or put a drug, into their drink. This is also sometimes referred to as serving someone a Mickey Finn. As you might have suspected since he has such a disturbing act named after him, Mickey Finn was not a good guy. He managed and tended bar at a restaurant in Chicago around the turn of the 20th century. In order to rob the patrons, Finn and his associates would put a knockout drug into a customer's drink. Once the man had passed out, Finn would take him into the back, rob him, and then dump him in the alley.

Joseph Hooker: Hooker, the slang term for prostitute, probably didn't originate with Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, but the story is so prevalent that it's worth a mention. Hooker's Civil War headquarters were apparently known for their crazy parties, lack of discipline, and abundance of women. There was rumored to be a group of prostitutes who followed Hooker's division as they moved around and many called them Hooker's Army. That's where many say the term "hooker" started, but other sources say the term was in use before the Civil War and the rise of Hooker. It may have referred to an area where there were lots of prostitutes, Corlear's Hook.

Mind Control - 10 Ways To Feel More Confident

http://www.pickthebrain.com

 

“Original Fake” Photo Credit: courtesy of MashKulture

Is your self-confidence natural, or a daily struggle?

Many people’s confidence naturally wavers from day to day, leaving them too timid or confused at just the wrong time. Whether you are naturally confident or could use some better eye contact with your life, setting in place a few simple strategies goes a long way to stoke your inner confidence.

If you think you’re not especially smart or capable, or that failure is a given no matter how hard you try, you’re right.

And if you believe you’re brilliant and can accomplish anything you set your mind to, you’re right.

Amplifying your inner confidence is like any other skill you develop; you can do it in a blink. Day by day, step by step, you will get closer to your goals. No one runs a marathon fueled by decision alone. It takes days, weeks, and months of consistent exercise before your muscles, lungs and stamina will harmonize enough to give you winning results.

Same with confidence. Use these 10 tips to start appearing as confident on the outside as you will soon feel on the inside.

1.  It’s not about you. Understand people’s actions, even when hurtful, rarely have anything to do with you. It’s easy to read into the negativity of others and see it as a slight to our personality or challenge to our ego. Yet this type of reaction can trigger unnecessary stress and prevent you from focusing on the positive things in your life. People are people; there’s never a need to link their behavior and your happiness. Knowing this gives you freedom to feel the confidence you deserve.

2.  Buy clothes that fit. Wearing clothes that fit well and flatter, no matter the shape of your body, provides an enormous boost to your self esteem. Don’t wait until you’ve arrived at a magical ideal to start dressing your best. Clothes never make the person, but it’s hard to feel confident inside when your outside sends signals of uncertainty. Love what you’re wearing and the world is likely to love it too.

3.  Keep laughing. Let your brain give vent to the endorphins that will fill you with authentic happiness and internal confidence. Laughter releases some of the tension that invariably builds in your body each day. Pepper your routine with the people or media that make you most happy. You don’t have to overdo it, but a bit of levity goes a long way toward elevating your level of confidence.

4.  Embrace the quiet. Many people are eager to populate every waking second with activity. With a world moving at the speed of broadband, the problem blooms more with every passing day. Realize you can be comfortable alone with your thoughts and you will provide your internal processes the space needed to develop. This will make you more comfortable with yourself, helping you appear more confident to others.

5.  Make a budget. If this isn’t natural for you, take the time to do it anyway. Claiming control of your finances is an early step to a healthy attitude about money. Though many people believe confidence comes with having lots of cash, confidence accompanies a clear picture of what you have and what you need.

6.  Don’t gossip. Exit conversations that swim in hearsay. Indulging in idle chatter might make you feel in the loop, but the feeling is fleeting and will leave you wondering what others are saying about you when you’re not around. Take the high road – you’ll feel better inside and appear far more confident to others around you.

7.  Do as you say and say as you do. This doesn’t mean you have to draw neat lines through all of life’s to-do’s, but if you articulate your goals, and start to accomplish them, easy ones first, you will develop a mindset of success. This, in turn, makes it easier to feel confident. Your goals could be anything from running your first 5K to finally cleaning out the garage; learning how to strum a guitar or play the piano. Whatever your goals, find something you truly desire, make a promise to see it through to the end, then feel the confidence of success.

8.  Make peace with your body. You will always want to stay active and improve your health, but your confidence comes with the understanding that no matter your size, shape, number of wrinkles or height, you are a person who deserves love and dignity from yourself and those around you. Truly know this, and confidence will bleed through your skin.

9.  Realize you know more than you think you do. All those things you think everyone else just knows? Well, they don’t. If you don’t know something, there’s no shame in asking for the answer. Admitting you don’t have the answer is the first step toward finding it, and the right answers pave the road to confidence.

10. Be enthusiastic. Playing it cool is a great way to ignore your honest emotions and bury the authentic you. Be happy and excited, and allow the world to see it. Your joy will be infectious, your confidence contagious.

You don’t have to follow all 10 of these tips, but they are starters that will help you find your internal confidence and boost your sense of self belonging. No one feels confident 100% of the time, but there are steps you can take to make yourself feel far more confident than you probably do now.

Start with any of the 10 items on this list, and start feeling better inside out today!