Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity

Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity (2004) is a treatise by political scientist and historian Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008). The book attempts to understand the nature of American identity and the challenges it will face in the future.

Describing American identity

Many people point to the American Creed as the core of American identity. Huntington defines the American Creed as embodying the “principles of liberty, equality, individualism, representative government, and private property”. Yet Huntington asks “Would America be the America it is today if in the 17th and 18th centuries it had been settled not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics? The answer is no. It would not be America; it would be Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil”. Of all the nations in Europe, and of all the colonies, America alone developed the American Creed — this simple observation requires explanation. This observation leads to two conclusions: that America was an English colony, and that America alone was formed as a result of the Reformation.

David Icke

David Vaughan Icke (/aɪk/, born 29 April 1952) is an English writer, public speaker and former professional footballer and sports broadcaster. He promotes conspiracy theories about global politics and has written extensively about them.

Icke was a BBC television sports presenter and spokesman for the Green Party, when in 1990 a psychic told him that he was a healer who had been placed on Earth for a purpose, and that the spirit world was going to pass messages to him. In March 1991 he held a press conference to announce that he was a "Son of the Godhead" – a phrase he said later the media had misunderstood. He said that a subsequent appearance on BBC's Wogan changed his life, turning him from a respected household name into a public laughing stock.

He nevertheless continued to develop his ideas, and in four books published over seven years—The Robots' Rebellion (1994), And the Truth Shall Set You Free (1995), The Biggest Secret (1999), and Children of the Matrix (2001)—he set out a worldview that combined New-Age spiritualism with a denunciation of totalitarian trends in the modern world. At the heart of his theories lies the idea that a secret group of reptilian humanoids called the Babylonian Brotherhood (including George W. Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, Kris Kristofferson and Boxcar Willie) controls humanity, and that many prominent figures are reptilian. He further proposes that the Moon is an artificial construct—"probably a hollowed-out planetoid"—from which the reptilians broadcast an "artificial sense of self and the world" that humans mistakenly perceive as reality.

Bob Theil

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Robert "Bob" Theil (born in Scotland, 2 October 1951) is a Scottish singer-songwriter and folk-rock musician.

Biography

Theil grew up in a farm near Brechin in the North East of Scotland. At the age of eight moved to a village called Marykirk. In the early 1970s moved to London, where he gradually began to build up his career as a musician.

Musical career

Bob Theil was very much influenced by the British folk revival in the 1970s: Al Stewart, Bert Jansch, Roy Harper, Michael Chapman and Richard Thompson. His voice, writing and guitar playing are an eclectic mix of folk and rock influences. From his Debut "So Far" (1982) He developed a unique style of combining folk-rock songs with delicately personal tales and events from history.

Discography

Albums

References

Electric Sheep

Electric Sheep is a distributed computing project for animating and evolving fractal flames, which are in turn distributed to the networked computers, which display them as a screensaver.

Process

The process is transparent to the casual user, who can simply install the software as a screensaver. Alternatively, the user may become more involved with the project, manually creating a fractal flame file for upload to the server where it is rendered into a video file of the animated fractal flame. As the screensaver entertains the user, their computer is also used for rendering commercial projects, sales of which keep the servers and developers running.

There are about 500,000 active users (monthly uniques).

According to Mitchell Whitelaw in his Metacreation: Art and Artificial Life, "On the screen they are luminous, twisting, elastic shapes, abstract tangles and loops of glowing filaments."

The name "Electric Sheep" is taken from the title of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The title mirrors the nature of the project: computers (androids) who have started running the screensaver begin rendering (dreaming) the fractal movies (sheep).

Justin Bieber

Justin Drew Bieber (/ˈbiːbər/; born March 1, 1994) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and record producer. Bieber released his debut EP, My World, in late 2009. It was certified platinum in the U.S. He became the first artist to have seven songs from a debut record chart on the Billboard Hot 100. Bieber released his first full-length studio album, My World 2.0, in 2010. It debuted at or near number one in several countries and was certified triple platinum in the U.S. It was preceded by his most successful single to date, "Baby".

Following his debut album, he had his first headlining tour, the My World Tour, released the remix albums My Worlds Acoustic and Never Say Never – The Remixes -- and the 3D biopic-concert film Justin Bieber: Never Say Never. He released his second studio album, Under the Mistletoe, in November 2011, when it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. Bieber released his third studio album, Believe, in 2012. His fourth studio album Purpose was released in November 2015. His U.S. album and singles sales total 44.7 million.