Lawrence R. Spencer's Blog, page 4
March 19, 2025
MISC. PICS
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LAWRENCERSPENCER.COM Ninja Name Conversion =TAKAMEISHIKUTOMEKUSHIARINOKUTOMIKUSHI.MIKURIN(now, you have 3 seconds to pronounce it correctly or you will die for disgracing the honor of my name!)
March 16, 2025
AN ASTRONAUT’S POINT OF VIEW
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Here is a very interesting video of Earth, as seen by astronauts. This external point of view has changed their “point of view� about life on Earth.
March 14, 2025
FEELING ELEPHANTS
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“I took an elective course just for the (bleep) of it. It was called Intimate Interpretations of Einstein’s Unified Field Theory. The instructor was a former room-mate of Al Einstein from when Al worked in the patent office in Switzerland from 1902 to 1909. His name was Professor Hans Schlongholder. This is how he explained Einstein’s theory to our class in his cheesy, Swiss accent:
“The universe, or any other relative reality, is like a group of people, each of whom is blindfolded. Each person is feeling a different part of an elephant. Each person describes the part of the elephant he feels. Al’s theory says that if everyone compares what they feel and they all agree on a collective feeling of the elephant, then they will all have an accurate picture of the whole elephant.
However, Al was never really quite sure that the picture of the elephant we were getting was of the hole, or the trunk. It all depends on which end of the elephant one is feeling and how fast he is traveling while feeling it, relative to the speed of the elephant itself and how the elephant feels about being felt at the time�.
Transcendentally speaking, in order to understand any universe one must look at the word itself: UNIVERSE. Basically, it’s made up of two separate words, “univ� and “erse.”� Does anyone understand what these words really mean? No. So, is it any mystery why the mysteries of the universe have never been solved?”� � Excerpt from THE BIG BLEEP by Lawrence R. Spencer
March 13, 2025
The 1% = The Interconnected Companies That Rule The World
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Say hello to the 1,318 highly interconnected transnational companies (with a core of 147 “super-entities�) that rule the world, as visualized by scientists at the Swiss Federal Insitute of Technology:
From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company’s operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.
The work, to be published in PloS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What’s more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world’s large blue chip and manufacturing firms � the “real� economy � representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.
When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity� of 147 even more tightly knit companies � all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity � that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,� says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.
The top 50 of the 147 superconnected companies1. Barclays plc
2. Capital Group Companies Inc
3. FMR Corporation
4. AXA
5. State Street Corporation
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co
7. Legal & General Group plc
8. Vanguard Group Inc
9. UBS AG
10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
11. Wellington Management Co LLP
12. Deutsche Bank AG
13. Franklin Resources Inc
14. Credit Suisse Group
15. Walton Enterprises LLC
16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp
17. Natixis
18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
20. Legg Mason Inc
21. Morgan Stanley
22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc
23. Northern Trust Corporation
24. Société Générale
25. Bank of America Corporation
26. Lloyds TSB Group plc
27. Invesco plc
28. Allianz SE 29. TIAA
30. Old Mutual Public Limited Company
31. Aviva plc
32. Schroders plc
33. Dodge & Cox
34. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc*
35. Sun Life Financial Inc
36. Standard Life plc
37. CNCE
38. Nomura Holdings Inc
39. The Depository Trust Company
40. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance
41. ING Groep NV
42. Brandes Investment Partners LP
43. Unicredito Italiano SPA
44. Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan
45. Vereniging Aegon
46. BNP Paribas
47. Affiliated Managers Group Inc
48. Resona Holdings Inc
49. Capital Group International Inc
50. China Petrochemical Group Company—Read the entire Article:
,19 October 2011 byAndy CoghlanԻDebora MacKenzie
(Thanks to for sharing the link to this article)
March 11, 2025
March 10, 2025
TOGETHER AND ALONE
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______________________________________________________
WE ARE THE ESSENCE OF OUR SELF:
AN ETERNAL SOURCE OF LIGHT.
KINDNESS IS UNDERSTANDING.
LOVING BEGETS LIFE.
WE CAUSE WHAT WE PERCEIVE.
WE ARE BEINGS FAR FROM HOME.
WE TRAVEL IN THE ENDLESS NOW:
TOGETHER AND ALONE.
March 9, 2025
64 BOOKS I HEARD LAST YEAR
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I stopped watching television. I refuse to be “dumbed down� by the “vast wasteland� of insidious drivel produced by the “mind-control media�. I prefer to spend my time with great writers. Like most writers I read a lot of books. In recent years I have become a huge fan of audio books! I listen to at least one book each week on my iPhone.
Recorded books are read to you, sometimes by the authors themselves, such as Stephen King or Neil Gaiman, while you do the routine hands-free activities of daily living: driving, grocery shopping, riding a bicycle, jogging, walking, cooking, cleaning, washing dishes, eating and pooping.
There are thousands of recorded books available. You can start by downloading a
This is a list of 64 Audio books I personally enjoyed hearing during the last year (many for the 2nd or 3rd time):
The Riverboat Series (5 books) by Philip Jose Farmer
Shantaram: A Novel by Gregory David Roberts
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Series of 6 books, including “And Another Thing�) by Douglas Adams
The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams
The Long Lost Tea Time of The Soul by Douglas Adams
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
Ecco Homo by Friedrich Nietzsche
Heresy by S.J. Parris
Prophecy S.J. Parris
Sacrilege S.J. Parris
Touch by Clair North
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Clair North
Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden
Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla by Marc J. Seifer
My Inventions by Nikola Tesla
The Art of Happiness by Dalai Lama
Our Occulted History by Jim Marrs
Ubik by Phillip K. Dick
The Hair Potter Series (7 books) by J.K. Rowling
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons
The Domain Expeditionary Rescue Mission by Lawrence R. Spencer
Alien Interview by Matilda MacElroy
Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez
Daemon by Daniel Suarez
Influx by Daniel Suarez
Theft of Swords by Michael J. Sullivan
Hollow World by Michael J. Sullivan
The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean
Pirates and the Man who brought them down by Colin Woodard
Far Journeys by Robert Monroe
Tao Te Ching by Stephen Mitchell
Off to Be The Wizard by Scott Meyer
Spell and High Water by Scott Meyer
Seize The Night by Dean Koontz
Fear Nothing by Dean Koontz
Ashley Bell by Dean Koontz
Bag of Bones by Stephen King
The John Carter Trilogy by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
The Ocean at The End of The Lane by Neil Gaiman
The Graveyard Boo, by Neil Gaiman
Good Omens by Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman
Dune (Series of 7 books) by Frank Herbert
March 8, 2025
DRIVING FOR MY SOUL
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About 40 years ago I bought a semi-truck and hit the roads of America hauling furniture as an contract trucker for Mayflower Van Lines. I spent 2 years of my life running back and forth, up and down the freeways, byways and back roads of the U.S. of A � about 200,00 miles of driving. I wanted to escape the city life of LA and years of reading spreadsheets all day as a corporate CFO. There isn’t any other experience quite like driving 10 hours a day across the highways of America. I worked all day loading my van with a house full of shit people wanted to take with them in search of another life. I was physically exhausted, but mentally revived. I got into the best shape of my life: 160 lbs. of rock-hard muscle that made women want me more than I wanted them, even after being alone for 3 months between a visits with my (ex)wife.
There isn’t any way to see a country and meet it’s people unless you go there in person, seeing; listening, eating truck stop food, sleeping in cheap-ass hotels and spending five thousand hours in the cab of a truck all by yourself. A trip across Texas take 3 days � north, south, east or west. No matter where to go in Texas, there’s more of it, and there’s almost always nothing there except more of nothing. Scrub brush. A few cows. Dirt and dry grass. Ironically, my current wife is from Texas � born and raised. She’s the love of my life. I’ve never known a more nobel person or a kinder soul.
The western US is the embodiment of desolate beauty. The old Route 66 across Arizona and New Mexico to Chicago has an aura all it’s own: you can’t help feeling like there are alien space craft hidden in the Mesas whenever you go there. Colorado is a planet all it’s own. Cresting the top of Eagle’s Pass for the first time scared the shit out of me when I saw how steep to decline was on the other side! Air brakes have a limit and so did my courage. Every region, every state is possessed by the beings that congregate there. There is a spiritual presence of the people who share the reality of the South. The Civil War never ended for them. The Northeast is like one big Courier & Ives post card: the crimson and gold hues of the trees in New Hampshire and Maine are a magnificent reflection of the Face of God!
I finally left the road behind after two nights sleeping in the single-bed bunk of my cab in the parking lot at a truck stop in Kansas City, MO in a blizzard, at Christmas time: it was 20 degrees below zero and the wind-chill made it twice as cold! What a god-forsaken shit hole! The tires of my truck were frozen solid to the ground with no hope of a load to get me out of town! I called my dispatcher in Indiana and said, “Honey, fuck this! I’m coming in.�
It turned in my truck, collected my final check and drove a “drive-away� car to Florida � anywhere to get out of the fucking frozen tundra of the Mid-West! I’ve been to Nashville and Milwaukee since then and finally learned my lesson: Never, Ever Go Back East In Winter Time! Hell was never as cold as Wisconsin in the dead-winter of February! Since then I’ve stayed on the Golden Shores of California. Thank the Gods for sunshine!
Retrospect (the rear-view mirror of 20/20 hindsight is your reward in old age ) reveals that I wasn’t your average truck driver. I spent all those isolated hours driving 60 miles an hour, 10- hours a day, toward the horizon listening to cassette tapes of classic literature and philosophy. I completed the education I never got in college on the asphalt highways of America. You can listen to a very big pile of books in two years if that’s all you do all day long, every day, 10 hours a day, seven days a week.
Many years later I became a writer. My first book was ‘THE OZ FACTORS�. My editor was Carol South, my wife’s best friend. She died � young and painfully � of breast cancer. We are blessed to have received the benefit of her tenacious intellect, aesthetic sense and technical ability.
Those two years I wasted on the road were more valuable to me than a 55-foot tractor-trailer full of gold. It was there and then, in a hundred towns across 10,000 miles, that I conquered the physical universe on my own, mile by mile, load by load. There are few things more gratifying than moving a baby-grand piano up a flight of stairs all alone. I learned that it wasn’t my muscles or my body that made it move � it was my soul: the essence of myself deciding to make it go. What else is there to know?
This song and video remind me of my days on the road. It wouldn’t do it again, but I wouldn’t trade the lessons I learned for anything. � (Lawrence R. Spencer. 2012)
March 7, 2025
SHADOWS AND LIGHT
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Enjoy some of the very best jazz music of the past century. Shadows and Light � withJoni Mitchell� electric guitar, vocals,Pat Metheny� lead guitar,Michael Brecker� saxophone and Lyle Mays � keyboards, The Persuasions � vocal backup. Recorded at the Santa Barbara County Bowl in September 1979 on the Mingus tour. Video includes classic “camp� clips from James Dean films, and other vintage footage.
Shadows and Light � lyrics by Joni Mitchell
Every picture has its shadows
And it has some source of light
Blindness blindness and sight
The perils of benefactors
The blessings of parasites
Blindness blindness and sight
Threatened by all things
Devil of cruelty
Drawn to all things
Devil of delight
Mythical devil of the ever-present laws
Governing blindness blindness and sight
Suntans in reservation dining rooms
Pale miners in their lantern rays
Night night and day
Hostage smile on presidents
Freedom scribbled in the subway
It’s like night night and day
Threatened by all things
God of cruelty
Drawn to all things
God of delight
Mythical god of the everlasting laws
Governing day day and night
Critics of all expression
Judges in black and white
Saying it’s wrong saying it’s right
Compelled by prescribed standards
Or some ideals we fight
For wrong wrong and right
Threatened by all things
Man of cruelty-mark of Cain
Drawn to all things
Man of delight-born again born again
Man of the laws the ever-broken laws
Governing wrong wrong and right
Governing wrong wrong and right
Wrong and right
