I have also made public a sophisticated benchmark harness that my company developed that can be used to create application level benchmarks like SysMark. You can access the source code here: https://github.com/van-smith/OPBM
OpenSourceMark and miniBench have both been very effective at providing CPU performance insights for new product development, validation, flag mining and product positioning.
A dear friend of mine, Richard Russell, has passed away. It is a sad day.
Richard is responsible for the most important benchmark on the planet, the Windows Experience Index, a project he managed for Microsoft. Prior to working at Microsoft, Richard worked for AMD.
I worked alongside Richard on the BAPCo consortium where he always fought the good fight.
Richard was a man of strong faith and he carried the awful burden of cancer for years. God, please bless Richard’s soul and give strength and protection to his family and those who will miss him.
Only a month or two after it was published, a detailed report that I wrote was wiped out during a BrightSideOfNews* hard drive crash. That exhaustive report, praised by many throughout the industry as the finest of its kind yet produced, examined the emerging and inevitable ARM versus x86 clash.
It took a little while and cost BSN* a lot of money to recover the data on the hard drive, but that report is now back up and can be read here.
I’m currently working on a followup to that bit of analysis that will include even more hardware than the initial report. I’m still waiting on a vendor or two, so I can’t promise an ETA yet, but one thing I can state is that the new report will be very interesting.
The computing landscape is changing rapidly and the war between x86 and ARM microprocessors is now underway. The competitors have dramatically different strengths and weakness, making for a particularly exciting confrontation.
Most importantly, the results of this war will have profound effects well beyond the CPU market, where several companies will possibly see their fortunes upended. One thing is absolutely certain: computing will never be the same again.
1.Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
2.Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity.
3.Unite humanity with a living new language.
4.Rule passion – faith – tradition – and all things with tempered reason.
5.Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
6.Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
7.Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
8.Balance personal rights with social duties.
9.Prize truth – beauty – love – seeking harmony with the infinite.
10.Be not a cancer on the earth – Leave room for nature – Leave room for nature.
— The Georgia Guidestones
This evening I will appear on the season finale of the History Channel’s new series Brad Meltzer’s Decoded. I was interviewed for that program to discuss my findings on the Georgia Guidestones monument located in Elbert County, Georgia.
I will briefly summarize my research in this article. For more background information on the Georgia Guidestones, see my original piece here.
In November, 2009, I uncovered incontrovertible evidence linking the Georgia Guidestones to the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world completed last year and nearly 30 years after the Guidestones were erected. This secret foreshadowing of the remarkable tower in Dubai stunned me and led me to dig much deeper into the meaning of the strange Georgia monument modeled after Stonehenge.
The Georgia Guidestones
It is immediately evident to even the most casual observer possessing only rudimentary understanding of modern occult beliefs that the Georgia Guidestones is the product of theosophy, a term that encompasses the Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Alice Bailey’s New Age movement and overtly Satanic cults inspired by Aleister Crowley.
It is written hieroglyphically with numbers and images; and the Apostle often appeals to the intelligence of the Initiated. “Let him who hath knowledge, understand! Let him who understands, calculate!” he often says, after an allegory or the mention of a number.
– Albert Pike, Morals and dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry
Recognizing the theosophical inspiration for the Georgia Guidestones, I knew that numerological messages might be hidden within the design of the monument since numerology is very important to theosophists. Given that much of the monument was built by proxy – the mysterious designer, “R.C. Christian,” provided the metric dimensions for the monument, the specifications of its astrological features, a model and a list of his ten guidelines for a post-apocalyptic world – it was most likely that messages would be encoded into the dimensions or raw proportions of the Georgia Guidestones component stone slabs.
The stories surrounding the origins of the Georgia Guidestones are murky and inconsistent, but one thing that is not in dispute is that R.C. Christian specified the dimensions of the Guidestone slabs in meters, which was an oddity in Georgia back in 1979 when he met with Joe Fendley, Sr., the 32-degree Freemason who owned the granite finishing company that eventually built the monument. The diagram below illustrates the metric dimensions (and resulting proportions) specified by R.C. Christian for each of the monument’s three component groups.
Georgia Guidestones measurements
Note that taking measurements of the slabs by hand is tricky due to their rough-hewn, rock-pitched surfaces formed by men bashing them into shape with sledgehammers. R.C. Christian specified this primitive finish to provide the monument with an ancient appearance. Fortunately, R.C. Christian disclosed the two primary metric dimensions of the four Guidestones in his book Common Sense Renewed. Each Guidestone was designed to be two meters wide by five meters tall. The remaining metric dimensions of the various Georgia Guidestones components are then evident by examination of the English unit measurements provided at the site. Additionally, we carefully measured the thickness of the English language Guidestone by hand and it was precisely 0.5 meters from finished edge to finished edge.
The metric measurements specified by R.C. Christian are then:
Capstone: 0.5m x 2m x 3m
Center “Gnomen” stone: 0.5m x 1m x 5m
Each of the four Guidestones: 0.5m x 2m x 5m
The corresponding proportions then become:
Capstone: 1 : 4 : 6
Center “Gnomen” stone: 1 : 2 : 10
Each of the four Guidestones: 1 : 4 : 10
If any component would have an encoded numerological message then it would be the four Guidestones. Each of the Guidestones has the proportion of 1:4:10, which immediately brought to mind the date January 4, 2010. I then discovered that the Burj Dubai would be opened on that date. The Burj Dubai, now called the Burj Khalifa, is by far the tallest building in the world and it strongly resembles Babylonian ziggurats, the building style that many believe was used for the Tower of Babel.
The Burj Dubai (now called the Burj Khalifa)
We also discovered that the former emir of Dubai, Sheik Maktoum bin Rashad al Maktoum, died unexpected during an Australian trip on January 4, 2006 (1/4/6) which corresponds to the proportions of the Capstone of the Georgia Guidestones (1:4:6). The death of Sheik Maktoum led to the ascendency of his brother, Sheik Mohammed, to become ruler of Dubai. Sheik Mohammed is directly responsible for the construction of the Burj Dubai, now called the Burj Khalifa. Sheik Mohammed’s building spree was a pursuit that nearly drove Dubai into receivership before being bailed out by Sheik Khalifa, the leader of neighboring Abu Dhabi.
Still, while those two connections were extraordinary, they were not beyond chance, so I looked for an indisputable connection between the two constructions. The most significant aspect of the Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world by over 1,000 feet, was its soaring height, so I tried to see if the height of the tower were also encoded into the Georgia Guidestones.
For numerology to carry any weight, the messages have to be encoded in obvious ways. The most obvious way to encode the height of the Burj Khalifa is by combining the proportions of the three component groups. I did this as follows:
Capstone: 1 + 4 + 6 = 11
Center “Gnomen” stone: 1 + 2 + 10 = 13
Each Guidestone: 1 + 4 + 10 = 15, but there are four Guidestones so taking this into account: 1 + 4 + 10 + 4 = 19
Oddly enough, the three derived numbers are all prime. Multiplying them together, I got:
11 x 13 x 19 = 2,717
I initially derived this number in November, 2009, and all sources at that time claimed the height of the Burj Dubai was only 2,684 feet. Most damningly, the 2010 Guinness Book of World Records, which we purchased in late November, also listed the tower’s height at 2,684 feet, some ten meters short of the number I derived.
Because any encoded numerological message had to be “hidden in plain sight” for it to have any meaning, I resolved myself at that time to the fact that the height of the Burj Dubai was not encoded into the Georgia Guidestones and that any connection between that strange monument and the Burj Dubai was tenuous.
However, on January 4, 2010, Sheik Mohammed had a surprise for the world: the actual height of the tower, renamed on that day as the “Burj Khalifa” in honor of the sheik who bailed out Dubai from bankruptcy only a few days earlier, was not 2,684 feet as had been widely believed, but was actually 2,717 feet, the exact value I had derived from the Georgia Guidestones over a month earlier!
Moreover, 11, 13 and 19 are the prime factors of 2,717, a very special set of numbers that simply constitute another way of writing “2,717.”
Combined with the two other connections to the Burj Khalifa mentioned earlier, there is no doubt that the Georgia Guidestones was designed with specific numerological links pointing directly to the Burj Khalifa. Again, those three links are as follows:
1. The capstone points to the unexpected death of Dubai’s Emir, Sheik Maktoum, on January 4, 2006.
2. The Guidestones contain the encoded date, January 4, 2010, the completion date of the Burj Khalifa.
3. The exact height of the Burj Khalifa, 2,717 feet, is encoded in an obvious fashion within the proportions of the Georgia Guidestone components.
The now indisputable connection between the two enigmatic structures provided me with motivation to understand their symbolic meaning along with the intentions of the powerful people who built them.
You might have noticed that I did not provide the significance of the proportions of the Gnomen Stone, the tall, thin central slab of the monument. Its proportions are 1:2:10 which sum to be 13. The number “13” is specifically significant when combined with the fact that the pseudonym for the monument’s designer was “R.C. Christian,” a transparent claim by him to be a follower or even an incarnation of Christian Rosenkreuz (Rosy Cross), the founder of Rosicrucianism who some claim has appeared throughout the centuries, perhaps most notably as the Count of St. Germaine, one of the fomenters of the French Revolution.
The central pillar of the Georgia Guidestones is a representation in granite of the number “13,” the number that signifies the “Hidden Hand” of the Rosicrucians. The Rosicrucians identify with this number because, they claim, it takes 12 identical spheres to completely conceal a thirteenth. The 12 outer spheres represent the visible world, while the inner thirteenth sphere signifies the “Hidden Hand” of the Rosicrucians working in secret to manipulate events in our history.
So the “13” encoded into the central Gnomen Stone is a calling card of the Rosicrucians.
A Rosicrucian Emblem
The symbolic meaning of the Burj Khalifa is unambiguous: it is the completion of the second Tower of Babel, a pursuit the Rosicrucians, Freemasons and their ilk have sought for millennia.
Understand at this point that Rosicrucians are an ill defined group. They are very secretive and it is unclear which formal organization, if any, is the legitimate heir to the Rosicrucian legacy.
Most people today who identify themselves as Rosicrucians are not much more than avid Dungeons & Dragons role-playing fans who like pretending to be modern-day wizards as grownups. Moreover, the various groups and chapters snipe at each other, refuting the legitimacy of other Rosicrucians.
However, one person who was apparently a bona fide Rosicrucian initiate was Sirhan Sirhan, the deranged man who was convicted for killing U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy. Today, Sirhan Sirhan is the poster child for “mind control,” a concept explored in the infamous CIA MK-Ultra experiments and an idea popularized in the 1959 motion picture The Manchurian Candidate (and remade in 2004).
A Rosicrucian: the convicted murderer Sirhan Sirhan
I have spent time researching the Rosicrucians in an attempt to better understand their connection to the Georgia Guidestones. While I do not believe all of these ideas, I share them with you so that you have in your hands some of the more well-known ideas surrounding this mysterious cult.
Interestingly, the Rosicrucians have been accused of practicing a form of mind control called “assumption” where members of the order are told to take over the minds of world leaders and other people to further Rosicrucian goals and obtain personal objectives.
More openly, Rosicrucians claim to practice magic. They brag that they can travel outside their bodies through a process called “astral projection.” In fact, they claim to not only travel to other planets through astral projection, but also to view the subatomic realm with this occult practice. However, they incorrectly maintained for years that all bodies in both domains were perfect spheres.
Historically, the Rosicrucians were probably formed in Germany by the remnants of the enigmatic and immensely powerful Knights Templar. The Rosicrucians are suspected in later establishing speculative Freemasonry in Scotland.
Francis Bacon and his wizard-like progenitor, John Dee, are both widely believed to have been Rosicrucians. Some accuse Bacon of formulating a vision of the New World as the “New Atlantis,” the reestablishment of the antiquarian society that holds an important position in theosophy.
The Rosicrucians are the preeminent theosophists, predating and directly influencing other modern occult groups. Theosophists claim that civilized mankind stretches much further back into antiquity than conventional archeologists and anthropologists accept. Before the Babylonians and Egyptians, a powerful country held sway over the world called Atlantis. With its destruction (described in various fantastic ways), survivors fled to the four corners of the globe and formed the Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations along with establishing civilizations eastwards into Iran and the Indus valley. These founders are called the “Aryans.”
Many people today still believe the Aryans existed. In fact, “Iran” essentially means “Land of the Aryans.” There is even some linguistic evidence supporting the existence of a mother “Aryan” language that gave birth to many different languages from Europe to the Indian Subcontinent.
They were white men, as we are, the superior race in intellect, in manliness, the governing race of the world, the conquering race of all other races. They called themselves Arya, the Aryans, the Warlike, or, some think, the Noble… we owe not one single truth, not one idea, in philosophy or religion to the Semitic race… it is a fact indisputable.
– Albert Pike, Lectures of the Arya
Hitler believed that Aryan decedents were still alive in his time. He and his Nazi brethren claimed the Aryans were the blond-haired, blue-eyed Europeans of Germany and Nordic countries who migrated westwardly from India and Iran. This is why Nazism has the strange confluence of Druidic and Hindu influences. In fact, the swastika was partially important to the Nazis because it was a symbol that connected the Druids, Hindu, Iranian and other ancient, purportedly Aryan cultures.
Ancient Iranian necklace featuring swastikas
Central to theosophy is the belief that all modern religions are remnants of the true Aryan religion. Theosophists try to find analogues to Biblical figures in other religions. For some of them, God is Zeus, Satan or Lucifer is Poseidon, and particularly important, Enoch is Thoth or Hermes. In fact, this last relation is the foundation of Hermeticism, a particularly incisive angle on Theosophy that serves as the heart of Rosicrucianism.
LUCIFER, the Light-bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble, sensual, or selfish Souls? Doubt it not!
– Albert Pike, Morals and dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry
Most theosophists are harmless, but the highest orders of Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism take a sinister position opposing Christianity. For them, God is an oppressive being who attempted to keep Adam and Eve ignorant and subservient in the Garden of Eden. Satan or Lucifer is viewed by them as a liberator and bringer of knowledge. These are the Luciferians.
Stand in awe of him, and sin not, speak his name with trembling … It is Satan who is the god of our planet and the only god…
– Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society
This veneration for Lucifer is captured in the number 322 used by the Masonic “Skull and Bones” command and control order. The Georgia Guidestones monument was officially completed on March 22 (3/22), 1980. “322” is important to the highest orders of Rosicrucians and Freemasons because it points to Genesis 3:22. Genesis 3:22-3:24 states:
22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
This is seen by Luciferians as an admission by God that man can become a god himself. It also demonstrates for them that God is unfair, cruel and jealous.
Skull and Bones emblem featuring 322
Accordingly, Luciferians have worked to overcome God for many centuries. Yet another passage in Genesis important for them is 11:6 where God remarks about King Nimrod’s attempt to construct the Tower of Babel:
And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
Genesis 11:6 is particularly important because it not only confirms for Luciferians yet again that man can become like God, but it also gives them a blueprint for doing so.
And this is where the Burj Khalifa comes in. Given its indisputable connection with the Georgia Guidestones, the Burj Khalifa is a modern Tower of Babel.
The Tower of Babel
The Burj Khalifa not only signifies a supreme Luciferian attempt to defy and defeat God, but the completion of the Tower is, for them, the beginning of a new age where man can become like God.
It should also be remarked that the 9/11 tragedies may have been carried out on that date for its occult significance. Note that 9/11 is an inversion of 11:6, denoting a destructive or chaotic event. In the occult, an upright symbol like a five-pointed star or pentagram represents order or constructive white magic while an inverted pentagram denotes chaos or black magic. Similarly, an upright cross indicates Christ while an inverted cross is associated with Satan (although diluted by its relationship with Peter’s crucifixion).
A Rosicrucian inverted pentagram featuring Baphomet
While it might sound fun to wield God’s powers, apotheosis, the transformation of man to god, is reserved for the chosen few while the rest of humanity is left in absolute bondage to worship and serve their new gods.
This new state of affairs is explicitly described in R.C. Christian’s Common Sense Renewed, a tome written to accompany and clarify the Georgia Guidestones. The book was delivered to every member of the U.S. Congress.
Robert Christian elaborates upon his Georgia Guidestones messages in his book Common Sense Renewed
R.C. Christian describes a “New Rational World Order” where an extraordinarily invasive form of eugenics is enforced by the State. Eugenics is the practice of human selective breeding. In Common Sense Renewed, eugenics is more than a tool to improve human stock, it is for shaping behavior and breaking the human spirit for serving the purposes of the State. The State will chose your mate and decide whether or not you can have children. Human breeding programs will ensure that behavior is favorably modified for the State. R.C. Christian compares this to dog breeding.
Health care is apportioned according to a person’s value to the State. The State’s godlike leaders receive the best life preserving, enhancing and extending technologies and techniques available, while the common man must make do with whatever the State sees fit for his lowly existence.
Employment is driven by the State’s need. Refusal of your job assignment or relocation will result in starvation and denial of health care.
The “New Rational World Order,” a term that R.C. Christian uses, is a global government composed of regional fiefdoms, but all working under the same, nightmarish, totalitarian rules.
And worst of all, R.C. Christian wants nearly everyone on the planet dead. With his global population target of only 500-million, nearly 6.5-billion of us will have to go.
And given the disturbing history of R.C. Christian’s cult, that population reduction will not be gradual, but sudden and orchestrated.
Some have maintained that the Georgia Guidestones were built to withstand an impending cataclysmic event that will decimate humanity. Given the decidedly unbenevolent attitude of Luciferian cultists, this is unlikely, but there is some evidence to support this belief.
Supposedly, B.F. Coggins, an extremely wealthy and powerful granite and real estate magnate in Elberton, Georgia, has in his company’s possession a Rosicrucian document describing the Georgia Guidestones monument as some sort of portal. The document admits that the monument contains hidden messages, but that only the enlightened will understand them. Moreover, the monument was designed for an activation event that will indicate the immediate threat of a global catastrophe so horrific that humanity will come close to losing all hope. The document reassures the survivors that they are loved and will be cared for. The tenor is such to evoke the impression that intercession will occur either supernaturally or by space aliens.
I deeply doubt the veracity of these claims, but if there is any possibility that they are true, the “activation event” can only mean that Polaris, the North Star, will drift out of the sighting hole drilled into the Gnomen stone. When I was last at the Guidestones this fall, Polaris was barely visible within the sighting hole. I had always assumed that this poor alignment was a result of workmanship flaws or settling of the monument over time. However, Wayne Mullenix, the man from whom R.C. Christian bought the land for the monument before deeding the parcel to Elbert County, told me that the foundation for the monument was spectacularly overbuilt, extending 20 feet in all directions away from the Georgia Guidestones and reaching all the way down to bedrock. Mr. Mullenix would know these construction details because he was responsible for building the steel reinforced foundation.
Given that the Guidestones foundation is so incredibly robust, it is unlikely that the misalignment of the Polaris Sighting Hole is due to settling. It also seems unlikely that the sighting hole would be improperly drilled given the remarkable care taken to ensure that the monument’s position would not change over time.
This benevolent account of the Georgia Guidestones also closely follows Hopi legends of a similar construction that their ancestors built in order to track polar alignment to warn of the coming Day of Purification, a very similar catastrophe used as fodder for 2012 hysteria.
However, there is no reputable scientific evidence supporting the notion of an impending 2012 cataclysm. On the other hand, there are good reasons to believe that the Georgia Guidestones is an arrogant advertisement for the demented plans of a deranged but powerful cult to overthrow national governments and install a totalitarian global government.
If anything, 2012 hysteria will be used as a smokescreen for manmade chaos leading up to that event.
So who is R.C. Christian? In my first article I mentioned that we suspected that Ted Turner was at least partially responsible for the Georgia Guidestones. Our motivation for believing this originated during our interview of Wyatt C. Martin, the banker who is purportedly the only man who knows R.C. Christian’s true identity.
The Georgia Guidestones monument was constructed by Freemasons
Prior to our interview, I had composed a list of three candidates for R.C. Christian. Mr. Martin flatly denied that either Joe Fendley, Sr., or Dr. Francis Merchant were behind the monument, but then he detoured unexpectedly into his story of the origins of the Georgia Guidestones. Many minutes later, I tried to bring the conversation back on topic by asking Mr. Martin if he knew who Ted Turner is.
Surprisingly, Mr. Martin erupted enthusiastically stating that he personally knew Ted Turner and had sat behind him for years in box seats at Atlanta Brave games at a time when Ted Turner owned the Braves. It was clear that Ted Turner’s relationship was meaningful for Mr. Martin.
When I then asked him if Ted Turner was R.C. Christian, Mr. Martin appeared stunned and then denied Turner’s involvement.
A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.
– Ted Turner, founder of CNN in Atlanta, Georgia, Kappa Sigma alumnus and donor of $1-billion to the United Nations
However, there is at least one other reason to believe that Ted Turner was connected in some way to the Georgia Guidestones. When I spoke with B.F. Coggins, who had boasted that nothing gets done in Elbert County without his approval, I asked him if he knew Ted Turner. Mr. Coggins volunteered that he was friends with both Turner and even better friends with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Carter was President at the time that the Georgia Guidestones monument was commissioned.
An achievable goal for anyone investigating the Georgia Guidestones who has moderate resources at their disposal is to identify the author of Common Sense Renewed. Here is the publisher information for that book:
The Georgia Guidestones have been an unwelcome detour from my career as a successful computer benchmarking expert and industry analyst. However, I have persisted in this investigation despite the potential risks to my career and growing business because the stakes involved for humanity are so grave.
The Georgia Guidestones monument contains irrefutable evidence demonstrating that a small group of secretive cultists are extremely wealthy and powerful and able to control and manipulate significant world events. This cabal formulated a plan for the construction of the tallest building in the world on the opposite side of the planet in Dubai more than 30 years after their intentions were encoded into the granite of the Georgia Guidestones. In addition to costing at least $1.5-billion, it appears that this plan required the assassination of Dubai’s ruler.
Moreover, this group’s actions have historically been sinister. The Burj Khalifa symbolizes the completion of a second Tower of Babel as their long sought victory over God. And with it, the beginnings of a New Age where they can now become like God. Their plans for a “New Rational World Order,” as outlined in R.C. Christian’s Common Sense Renewed, involve the establishment of a horrific totalitarian world government enforcing human breeding programs to ensure “docility and loyalty” as has been done with dogs. R.C. Christian’s world state will control every aspect of the common man’s life including choosing his mate and deciding whether or not he can have children.
Attempts to explain the Georgia Guidestones as an effort from a group of “enlightened beings” to warn humanity of an upcoming 2012 apocalypse are hogwash. There is no credible scientific evidence for an impending global catastrophe late next year.
More likely, 2012 hysteria might be leveraged as cover for disguised acts of manmade chaos used to bring down the sovereignty of nations and orchestrate war as a prelude for a global government constructed upon the ashes of civilization. Its capitol may very well be in Dubai. In fact, soon after the Burj Khalifa was formally opened, Dubai invited the United Nations to move its headquarters there.
In addition to constructing a new Tower of Babel, the same cultists have also sought to rebuild Solomon’s Temple so that they can simultaneously introduce their messiah, the first person to undergo apotheosis. Their completion of the Burj Khalifa indicates that this person is alive today and will be introduced soon, probably amidst a catharsis of global war.
The producers and investigators for Brad Meltzer’s Decoded interviewed me for several hours. I told them all of this and more. Of course, I also explained alternative theories so that they could understand the complete picture of the Georgia Guidestones.
I am not sure which angle they will take with my testimonials – I understand that they are a business involved with “edutainment” and can’t court much controversy – but I am hopeful that at least a few people who view that program will become interested enough in the topic to conduct their own investigations. A good place to start is here.
The History Channel is currently running commercials for the season finale of Brad Meltzer’s Decoded. The initial voiceover in the commercial is mine before they cut briefly to my image. The finale, which investigates the Georgia Guidestones, will play next Thursday, February 3rd, at 10PM Eastern, 9PM Central.
The three investigators, Buddy, Mac and Scott, a Major in the U.S. Army Reserves, interviewed me for a very long time as did the show’s producers. I do not know how they or Brad Meltzer are going to characterize the information that I gave them, but know that I did my best. Within the several hours of conversations, I told them as much as possible about the Georgia Guidestones and that monument’s diabolical connections to the Burj Khalifa.
Those of you who know me understand that I am a very private man. I don’t relish appearing on camera and the testimony I gave Decoded has the potential to harm my credibility within the computer industry and hurt my growing business. However, the Georgia Guidestones information is that important.
I solemnly prayed for guidance before agreeing to the interview. Whatever happens, I acted out of Faith and if any consequences from those actions fall upon me, I will bear them with God’s help.
Dr. Stan Monteith invited me back on his popular and influential Radio Liberty broadcast last Friday. You can listen to that interview here.
Jesse Ventura’s hit television program Conspiracy Theory featured Dr. Montieth last year. Dr. Monteith most recently appeared on the History Channel’s new series Brad Meltzer’s Decoded.
In a few weeks, I am scheduled to be on the season ending episode of Brad Meltzer’s Decoded which focuses on the Georgia Guidestones.
Kathy’s 79-year-old uncle, Dr. Paul Magelli, is traveling to Arusa, Tanzania, to climb Africa’s tallest mountain, Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Uncle Paul will be the oldest person ever to ascend to the top of the 19,380 foot peak. His climb begins January 5th. He expects to reach the summit on January 12.
Illegal immigration is a huge problem in the United States. Crime, disease, terrorism, declining wages for Americans and the breakdown of social infrastructure like schools and hospitals are increasingly serious concerns.
However, the media and the Congress are attempting to leverage one issue where many people have sympathy for the influx of illegal aliens: the plight of migrant farm workers.
Perhaps Americans have forgotten, but migrant farm workers used to come from our own country. My mother and her family would travel all over the country to work on farms to pick cotton, strawberries, tomatoes, watermelons, peppers or whatever crop was in season.
My mother, now in her late seventies and who is half Apache and half Cherokee, often recounts stories of working in the fields.
Americans are willing to work hard; Americans set the world’s standard for hard work. The problem is that in many areas of the country the wages have been severely undermined by waves of illegal immigrants who hail from the impoverished regions of Third World countries and who require much lower pay than Americans, partially because few of them pay any taxes.
In other words, illegal immigration has destroyed the job market for Americans seeking employment as farm laborers.
The meat packing industry has been even more seriously hit. A few decades ago, many jobs in the meat packing industry paid over twenty dollars per hour. Since the floodgates have opened to illegal immigration, jobs in the meat packing industry barely creep over minimum wage and working conditions are now much worse, almost certainly explaining the exploding rates of food borne illnesses.
Site newsComments Off on Distributed Denial of Service Attack against vanshardware.com
Aug202010
The vanshardware.com server has been the target of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack for about the last ten hours. Not only has our website been down, but our email server has not been functioning properly.
A DDoS is commonly carried out by a virus maker who has taken control of many infected personal computers from a remote location. The virus maker then directs his army of infected computers to attack a particular website. Because the attack may come from many thousands of computers at once, it is difficult and tedious to block the incoming malicious requests to the server without blocking legitimate traffic as well.
System administrators tending our server have been blocking the IP addresses attacking our server. Within the last hour, it appears they have been successful in reducing the severity of the issue enough that our website is becoming accessible once again.
Hopefully this issue will be completely resolved soon.
Vaughan Foods of Moore, Oklahoma, has issued a recall of romaine lettuce with “use by” dates of May 9 through May 10. The recall is for lettuce sold to restaraunts and the food service industry.
However, as I mentioned in Saturday’s post here, I became ill from eating romaine lettuce purchased in Arkansas from either Wal-Mart or Sam’s Club, so the recall is still not broad enough.
Note the “use by” dates on the lettuce under recall. It is possible if not likely that the FDA is working with Wal-Mart to contain the recall until the tainted lettuce expires in order to protect the retail giant from taking costly action. Also notice that today’s CNN report makes no mention of the Sysco recall linked to in my last post.
The FDA still claims that only 19 people limited to Ohio, Michigan and New York became ill because of the E. Coli 0145 outbreak. E. coli 0145 is not normally tracked by the FDA and the current, potentially life threatening outbreak is considered novel.
A sickened Ohio State University freshman is suing Freshway Foods and his lawyer disputes the FDA’s information.
Freshman Richard Cardinale filed a lawsuit after his stool sample tested positive for E. coli O145, according to court documents. He suffered from gastrointestinal problems including bloody diarrhea and dehydration and was hospitalized on April 14 for treatment.
Food safety lawyer Bill Marler, who is representing Cardinale, said the E. coli O145 outbreak may have sickened as many as 59 people.
“We have a new form of deadly E. coli to contend with. It is past time for the government and industry to track this bug as it does E. coli O157:H7,” said Marler, referring to the best known form of toxic E. coli.
The contaminated lettuce is believed to have originated from a Yuma, Arizona, farm.
Authorities are investigating a farm near Yuma, Arizona, where the tainted lettuce was harvested, the Food and Drug Administration said. Vaughan Foods received lettuce from that farm, the administration said.
Yuma, Arizona, is located on the Mexican border and the E. coli outbreak has intensified the illegal immigration debate. This controversy is reflected in the comment sections of many articles reporting the E. coli outbreak. Some people are worried that the food contamination is a direct result of illegal immigration itself as described in this CNN comment.
Yuma Arizona is where more illegal Mexicans cross into the country than any other border location. The Colorado River separates Mexico from the U.S. there and daily crossings of hundreds of illegals takes place every day. It is not unusal so see small groups of illegals going potty among the many farms there as they make their way to the U.S. We see groups of alleged illegals carrying AK-47s walking along the railroad tracks. The new food terrorist.
by wyodutch May 7, 2010 5:49 PM EDT
E-coli on lettuce comes from one thing only… fecal material.
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You think the lettuce-picker from Mexico (who never saw an indoor toilet until he jumped the border)… is gonna run to the outhose when nature calls? Of course not…they squat in the lettuce patch and the Gringo dines on the tainted lettuce.
.
There you are… good, hardworking people from Mexico… just doing “jobs” that Americans won’t do.
According to Salinas, California, television station KCBA, large numbers of illegal immigrants migrate to Yuma, Arizona, to work as farmhands on winter crops.
A majority of ag workers are illegal immigrants. Most of them migrate to Yuma, Arizona for winter crops.
The recall only applies to romaine lettuce with “best if used by” date before or on May 12, when Freshway Foods stopped buying its romaine from Yuma, Beer said.
Officials in Arizona also confirmed the investigation. Laura Oxley, a spokeswoman for Arizona’s agriculture and health departments, said federal officials contacted them and told them they suspected the source of the E. coli outbreak was lettuce grown in the state. She said there were no additional shipments to stop because the winter lettuce season has mostly ended for the year.
The Yuma area is the source of much of the nation’s winter lettuce crop, but farmers switch to other crops at the end of winter.
E. coli bacteria occurs in human excrement, so the contaminated lettuce came in contact with fecal matter and the contamination almost certainly occurred at farm level.
“Experience tells us that the point of contamination is likely at the farm level, which can then be spread during the entire processing chain,” Allen said.
The E. coli outbreak occurs in the middle of heated debates regarding a recently passed Arizona law which aims to take action against illegal immigration within that state. Enforcement of that law will begin this summer.
Some people are worried that the E. coli outbreak might be an act of terrorism in direct retaliation against the Arizona legislation.
by myassss May 9, 2010 11:54 PM EDT
Couldn’t possibly be retaliation for the recent law passed in Az?
I agree with desertdwellr, FBI investigate and bring about terrorist charges to those involved!
Analysis, News, Site newsComments Off on E. Coli tainted lettuce outbreak probably larger than being reported
May092010
Last Sunday, I posted that I had been very ill for about a week with E. coli food poisoning. My wife and I had already isolated romaine lettuce as the illness vector at the time of that post.
Four days later, the FDA reported an E. coli outbreak in several states due to tainted romaine lettuce sold by Freshway Foods. Arkansas, where I live, was not among the list of states where shredded romaine lettuce was being recalled, although the recall was broadened significantly yesterday. Also, the romaine lettuce that made me sick was not shredded. It was either organic romaine lettuce from Wal-Mart or part of a six-pack of romaine lettuce obtained from Sam’s Club.
Consequently, it is probable that the scope of E. coli contaminated romaine lettuce is larger than what the FDA is currently reporting.
The predominate symptom that I suffered was significant pain throughout much of my large intestine. I had a bout of diverticulitis several years ago and the abdominal tenderness was very similar. However, the pain from the recent food poisoning was spread over a much larger area.
Lettuce becomes contaminated with E. coli bacteria when brought into contact with fecal matter. This commonly occurs in third world countries like Mexico where human and animal waste is often used as fertilizer. However, there have been reports of E. coli tainted crops originating in the U.S.. This is commonly believed to be the result of inadequate toilet facilities for migrant fieldworkers.
In any case, I can tell you from personal experience that you don’t want to catch this illness. I could barely get out of bed for several days and my wife constantly urged me to go to the hospital. Fortunately, the symptoms eventually abated and I did not have to seek medical treatment.
Is it coming to a time in the United States when we have to treat our food like we live in Cambodia or Somalia, soaking our lettuce in bleach? The FDA does not appear to be useful as demonstrated by the fact that E. coli food-borne illnesses were virtually unheard of in the U.S. when I was a child. And don’t forget that I became sick with E. coli in an area of the country still outside the scope of the FDA’s current recall — and I became sick nearly two weeks before the FDA said anything about an E. coli lettuce outbreak.
Also recall the FDA’s recent tomato ban that cost the American tomato industry millions of dollars only for the FDA to later discover that the outbreak was actually due to Salmonella-tainted, Mexican-grown Jalapeno peppers.
The best remedy is to simply not trust the government’s ability or inclination to provide adequate food safety. Buy locally produced food, or, better yet, raise your own vegetables and farm animals or purchase foods produced by your friends. With the exception of lettuce and a few other items, we buy a large portion of our fresh food locally or raise our own food. Lettuce was the exception. It appears we’ll have to reconsider our lettuce sources now.
Although I did not enjoy being sick, it is good that I became ill rather than our little children where E. coli can be a much graver infection.
Analysis, Site newsComments Off on Listen to my recent Georgia Guidestones interview on Argusoog Dutch radio
May052010
Argusoog Radio‘s Désirée Röver interviewed me last Sunday from the Netherlands about my Georgia Guidestones research. I was still a little ill at the time, but Désirée kept me on track.
You can listen to that interview here. Most of it is in English.
I apologize for making so few updates this past week, but I have been very ill with what appears to be E. coli food poisoning. My large intestine felt like it had been surgically removed, stomped on by a large-intestine-hating elephant and then replaced. Although I was bedridden for several days, I am much better now and will likely be fully recovered in a day or so.
I am scheduled to be on Rick Adams Uncensored tonight at 9PM Central / 10PM Eastern / 8PM Mountain / 7PM Pacific. The topic will be the Georgia Guidestones. There might be an opportunity to call in and ask questions.
In addition to satellite listening options (Transponder Frequency 11836, Symbol Rate 2Ø77Ø, @ 97 degrees west), you will be able to listen to the Internet stream here.
Mark Morrow kindly invited me to appear on his program, Sojournal, to discuss my research on the Georgia Guidestones. You can listen to that interview here.
A central component of my ARM versus x86 report published last week on Bright Side of News* was my miniBench benchmark. For that analysis, I ported miniBench to Linux for both x86 and ARM ISAs.
The ARM project can now be downloaded here. You will need the Code::Blocks IDE to manage the GCC C++ project. Code::Blocks is available from the Ubuntu repositories so it is very easy to install. Of course, you will also need to minimally install gcc, g++ and gdb.
The miniBench x86 project is available here. The x86 Linux binary is here and the ARM binary is here.
I will merge the x86 and ARM projects and upload them to SourceForge shortly.
BSN* has posted another of my articles. In it, I compare iPad browsing performance against an Intel Atom N450 netbook using the four most popular web browsers. While the Atom-based systems pretty much trounces the iPad except when using Microsoft Internet Explorer 8. IE8 on the Atom makes the iPad look fast.
Additionally, Opera 10.51 beats all comers.
Major kudos are also in order for Opera. Already a big player in the mobile browser market, Opera 10.51 manhandled the competition across all three benchmarks. Safari and Chrome finished a distant second and third respectively. Firefox 3.6.3 kept pace with those two except on the quirky Google V8 benchmark where it stumbled badly.
The popular technology website Bright Side of News* has published an in-depth report I authored comparing an ARM Cortex-A8 microprocessor, used in the Apple iPad’s A4 chip, against a trifecta of x86 CPUs typically found in netbooks, small notebooks and embedded devices. My report particularly focuses on compute performance.
A major component of that comparison is miniBench, an open source benchmark that I wrote in C++. I ported miniBench to Linux for both ARM and x86 platforms enabling, for the first time, objective, head-to-head performance comparisons across a wide range of meaningful tests like Dhrystone, Whetstone, FFT, LinPack, MFLOPS, AES, SHA1, SHA256 and many others.
While I worked as head of benchmarking for Centaur Technology, we used miniBench to help isolate performance problems in our microprocessors so that we could optimize out the weakest attributes of our chip designs.
In the BSN* report, I also compare performance across a number of popular JavaScript benchmarks and a few other native tests.
The results surprised me. It is also worth examinig the relative compute performance between the new Intel Atom N450, the new VIA Nano L3050 and an old AMD Mobile Athlon based upon the Barton core.
I noticed that Theo generously gave me credit for the recall of the 1.13GHz Intel Pentium III. I want to make it clear that Tom Pabst discovered the speed path defect that manifested when he was trying to compile the Linux kernel. My part in the recall was representing Tom’s Hardware at Intel. The representative for the giant chipmaker initially laughed at the issue until I threatened him with an united call to yank the defective part involving a number of major computer hardware ethusiast websites.
Minister Dante Fortson and Brother Benny “BJ” Jacobs interviewed me for two hours on the Georgia Guidestones. You can listen to that Omega Hour interview here.
Several months ago, I had a dream that may have saved the life of one of my children. Soon afterward, I recounted the incident to one of my friends and I’ll share that note here.
A miracle happened to us Sunday. Early that morning I had a nightmare. In that dream I was leaving a building with several people when I found a green pushpin in my hand. I was being hurried with the other people and didn’t want to carry the pushpin with me so I stuck it in the wall next to me. At first I was unsure to do this, but then I saw many pushpins already in the wall so I left mine with all of the others.
Soon in the same dream I found myself and my family on a walk outside. We turned left onto an overgrown trail next to the water. In front of us further down the trail was a bridge that passed overhead. The children had gotten ahead of me and I warned them to be very watchful for snakes. We then immediately saw a garter snake which I pointed out to the children. I told them it was common and harmless and showed them how to identify it. I then turned around and saw that the girls had picked up another harmless snake and were playing with it. We continued walking, but very soon I saw a pigmy rattlesnake crawl by us and then a timber rattlesnake, which I killed with a 6″ long stick in my hand, the only stick I could find. Soon there were water moccasins and rattlesnakes all around me and the panicking children. I picked up Elijah under one arm and started hitting at the snakes with the half-foot stick when I woke up around 4:30 AM and couldn’t fall back asleep.
When I got up, Kathy woke. I apologized for stirring her and told her about my nightmare.
Later that day, the computer running our Internet cell modem was acting up so I went into the apartment bedroom to reset it. After I had done so, I turned around and noticed a green pushpin that I had never seen before on a table next to the bed. I looked at it closely and lifted up the papers next to it and found many more pushpins. The green pushpin was exactly like the one in my dream. This unsettled me a little.
Sunday was beautiful so we wanted to get the children out of the house. I wanted to go to the park and throw the Frisbee, but Kathy suggested that we visit the Cossatot visitor center and then take a hike. I agreed.
When we got to the visitor center, I noticed a live garter snake in a terrarium, one of only four or five live exhibits. After I showed the snake to Elijah, I turned around and was startled to see the girls holding a milk snake. I took a few pictures of them playing with the snake, but was, of course, reminded about my nightmare. After the girls gave the snake back to the woman working at the center, I noticed hiking sticks for sale at the same counter. Disturbed by my nightmare, I decided to get Hattie, Winnie and Elijah hiking sticks since they did not have their own sticks yet. Hiking sticks are are very useful around here for safety and protection, particularly against snakes.
We left the visitor center when Kathy suggested that we walk down to the river. We arrived there, crossed the low foot bridge to the other side and noticed a narrow riverside trail to the left that penetrated through cane thickets mangled by the recent floods. The trail led underneath a bridge that passed high overhead. The children bolted down the trail when Kathy immediately reminded me about my dream. I then shouted to the children to be very careful and watch cautiously for snakes. I told them about my dream and was recounting the things that had happened that day when Hattie, who was leading us with her new walking stick in hand, yelled to me that she found a snake on the trail a few feet in front of her. I ran up to her and saw a water moccasin stretched lengthwise down the trail in a spot that was almost completely overgrown.
Aggressive and unafraid of people, water moccasins are the worst snakes to encounter under such circumstances because they would rather bite you than flee.
Of course, we turned around and left.
However, if I had not had the nightmare which woke me up early that morning, if I had not told Kathy about it, if I had not been reminded of the dream throughout the day and therefore motivated to take it seriously, if I had not purchased the walking sticks, if Kathy had not reminded me of the nightmare when we got on the trail, if all of this had not happened then it is likely if not certain that one of the children would have stepped on the water moccasin and been bitten.
This is not the first time miracles like this have happened to me, and that’s why Kathy took my dream so seriously. I’ve asked myself why God speaks to me this way and I believe it is largely because I believe in Him and listen to Him.
Today, I fully withdrew from Chris Pinto’s Georgia Guidestones video project. I have requested that all video, audio, still images and anything else connecting me and my wife to the film not be used.
I have counted my loses and I am ready to move forward. I plan no further public comments on this subject.
