David Porush assembled a bevy of brain-stretching documents as background for Converging on Opportunity. A prediction that rings true: By 2006 we will have shitloads of transmission protocols for the home user which gives them hundreds and thousands and millions of kilobytes of bandwith in, but still at like 30k going out. Why? Because the average user is a lame web surfer, still.
"When the instant speed of information movement begins...there is a collapse of delegated authority and a dissolution of the pyramid and management structures made familiar in the organizational chart. The separation of functions and the division of spaces, stages, and tasks ...tend to dissolve through the organic interrelations of electricity."
Marshall McLuhan, 1964 | Not to be let off on a technicality like it being the weekend, Media Temporalities in the Internet: Philosophy of Time and Media with Derrida and Rorty is an assignment that will reap rewards come Monday meeting time.
| "The current situation is characterized by a plurality of heterogenous time concepts." | Compare the statement: Ninety percent of the world's births and 77 percent of its deaths will take place in LDCs (less developed countries) in 1998., and this one: It takes 2,500 gallons of water, 12 pounds of grain, 35 pounds of topsoil and the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline to produce one pound of feedlot beef...... Sustainability,
Carrying Capacity,
and Overconsumption. Note the list on the right side that shows energy consumption by country; I am one em-bare-assed Canuck.
I have a case of gastro-ethical neuroburn from my double-burger and cheese, but Spider Robinson to the rescue with a look back from the future; When we will be like the gods.
| "Right around your day," she explains, "worldwide
population reached the point at which half the
geniuses that ever lived were alive -- and all had
access to excellent tools and resources. The
Singularity was inevitable." | The Global Studies Program appears to be the purview of those who would grok the really big picture and make sense of the Gaian ideosphere's macro-fractal-(dis)order. Changes in Global Society is a proposal put together by the triune of Minnesota-Stanford-Wisconsin, and may indicate a change in approach to interdisciplinary studies.
| "The Consortium is an educational
experiment that is fostering more adequate understanding of the complexities of change in
contemporary global society." |
Representing the Impossible: (Past, Present, and Future):
Time Travel in A Christmas Carol and Beyond investigates temporal distortion in the only way in which it can, and in the process expands my fiction.
| "Time travel is impossible: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that." | War, conflict, violence, intractable disputes; all providing meat for our media in it's choice of selectively attended 'fact', and purposefully created fiction. Understanding Conflict and War, Vol. 1 The Dynamic Psychological Field by R.J. Rummel.
| "My theoretical framework sees us individually as a
dynamic psychological field of disposition and powers, and humankind as a
dialectical balance of these individual fields within an intentional field
comprising our sociocultural environments and physical ecology." |
Michael Parenti brings it home, with Hidden Holocaust, USA. The level of suffering is truly obscene, and at least partly due to mechanisms and misguided legislation designed to alleviate suffering. For example, every year 1,300,000 suffer some kind of injury related to treatment at hospitals, 2,000,000 to 4,000,00 women are battered. Domestic violence is the
single largest cause of injury and second largest cause of death to U.S.
women, 5,100,000* are behind bars or on probation or parole.
| "Official bromides to the contrary, we are faced with a hidden holocaust, a
social pathology of staggering dimensions. Furthermore, the above figures
do not tell the whole story. In almost every category an unknown number of
persons go unreported." |
The military view is obviously of a more pragmatic disposition. Spotting Trouble - Identifying Faltering and Failing States
| "It should be reemphasized that the final determination of a state's potential for failure rests on no single area. For example, in the United States (a nation that is not deemed in danger of failure) one could cite failure to control borders and high crime rates as potentially serious problems." | The positively vibrant pages of YES! bring us an article by Jean Houston that suggests that rather than dehumanizing or consumerizing us, we can see the internet as a place where a new species intelligence is being born. cyber consciousness
| "Resonance has become more important than relevance, and we are starting to believe that reality is a tissue of interrelated stories. Cyberspace is changing our worldview. Discreet forms break down, and everything is known to be linked." | While we have been busy worrying about the bomb, Rachael Carson's vision has effectively come to pass; with certain consequences. Neurotoxicity, developmental toxicity, endocrine toxicity, immunotoxicity, reproductive toxicity, musculoskeletal toxicity and cardiovascular toxicity will result in a chaotic Chemical Manipulation of Consciousness, Behavior, Health and Evolutionary Potential in the Human Population. 'scuse me, I just farted.
Katherine Neville, The Magic Circle: Adventures in Research
| "I've travelled all over the world researching The Magic Circle--and have had a lot of adventures and seen a lot of things that didn't end up in the book. Here's your chance to read about some of them." | Perhaps the sane explication of our implicate need to collectively co-habit lies in creating a global field of interconnected Intentional Communities. Inte(r)n(e)tCom?
"Imagine again all this love
painting people in peace and life
And surrender to the dreamer
John was not the only one
We hope the moment too to come
and love change all as one"
Mark Borcherding | Knowing as we do that "the times, they are a-changing", we are left wondering
What Job You Can Accept. Tyranny is not only maintained by the jack-boots, but also by those who keep the books for those who make the firing pins for those who make the guns for the authoritarian Suidae. Aw, man, my coffee was an ethically bereft purchase....
| "In its most general form the problem appears as a near-omnipresent threat of moral prostitution." | A Psychohistorical Analysis of the Japanese American Internment also brings to attention the implications such action has for other vulnerable groups. Our current mass internment of victims and their property in the 'War on Drug Peace' is no less despicable.
| "Even a political system with checks and an extremely strong judiciary will not always champion those (human) rights successfully. The Justices of the US Supreme Court are themselves prisoners of culture." | Orgasms and Epilepsy
| "All you, healthy people, do not even suspect what happiness is, that happiness which we epileptics experience during the second before the attack. During a few moments I feel such a happiness that it is impossible to realize at other times, and other people cannot imagine it." | Godwin Revisited: Anarchism for the Real World by Christopher Joseph Roberson
| "Presumably, a community should not have any of the fatal features that make states so unappealing. But in order to say just what those features are, we will need to know just what it is that we are objecting to." | As our support continues to erode for those who for whatever reason are outside the capitalist metameme, the quiet revolution of sense enters limenal view.
Radical Cities and Social Revolution: An Interview with Janet Biehl.
| "Whatever the cause of the crisis, when it does develop, its social
outcome will by no means necessarily be a rational, ecological, and
libertarian society. Its outcome could be a dictatorship, or chaos. If the
crisis is to result in emancipation, at least some degree of
consciousness of the liberatory alternative will have to be in place
beforehand." |
Stephen Kline discusses the sordid world of character marketing, and offers a solution to advert pollution similar to the Proxomitron, which does a great job of de-commercializing the web.
| "I am actually
launching a campaign to get people to convert the
V-chip to an A-chip--by setting it to exclude all
unrated programs, the advertising magically
disappears from your screen!" | David Deutsch uses his substantial talent to reveal the The Final Prejudice.
| "The real prejudice, then, is against children as people; not against their shapes but against their minds." | Manifesto in Hypertext boosts my morale significantly, bringing me Zen-like 'back to one'. My meaning is clear, "their" meanies far from it. Dr. Menlo is a 'blogger as well as a great writer.
| "This is the newest--and it will be the greatest--nonviolent
truly global revolution there ever was. (The people, anyway, would like for
it to be nonviolent. The American/global police state has other ideas.)" | Imagination crushed by adult "realism", Arthur Paul Patterson grew up to bring us this tale of inight into play; for real. Catch Us If You Can.
| "My inner child has the pernicious habit of throwing himself down the stairs." | Peter Wayne is a writer at large, who has largely been driven by his obsessions. In A Crooked Life he shows his talents undiminished regardless of his falls from grace.
"The last we heard, Peter was back in familiar territory--trying to book into a hotel in Soho, saying that his publishers would pick up the tab."
Ravi Mattu |
I just recieved in the mail the future requirements, Jan 1/01, for gun ownership here in Canada. We will need a license to own a gun, and a license for the gun. I live in the Yukon, and there's bears out there! I don't carry a gun, but I do make lots of noise (did you know cauliflower washed down with milk gives one rear seat drive?). Now, there was a cougar in downtown Victoria once, completely freaked no doubt, last I heard though L.A. does not abound with dangerous wild animals. Maybe the noise thing world work against dangerous wild people. Gun Crazy: Constitutional False Consciousness and Dereliction of Dialogic Responsibility.
| "This is an Article about the causes and costs of false consciousness -- false
consciousness regarding the constitutional concept of the "right to bear arms." This is an
Article about the deceit, misperception, and dereliction of responsibility that have
characterized America's dysfunctional gun control debate." | I think that if we all, personally, take the bullshit by the bollocks, there is hope. Peter A. Zuckerman's Beyond the Holocaust: Survival or Extinction? A Survival Manual for Humanity.
| "Only the fearless can look into the eye of the tiger and still come away unvanquished. This is what I am asking the reader to do." | How Can New Interactive Communication Technology Enhance Harmonious and Functional Communities at all Scales Worldwide? Society, Cyberspace and the Future, collated from a workshop held in '95, is instructive both in it's deep enquiry and in reflective relevance.
| "In this report, we visualize both potentially
positive and negative effects on communities and identify specific near-term actions and
policies which can enhance broad, informed participation in content-rich networks in the
future." | Righting the World's Mistakes: An Interview
with Hazel Henderson
| "The fundamental issue is the very economic model underlying today's globalization
of technology trade and markets. The critics, from many diverse
perspectives, agree that "free trade" which does not account for social and
environmental costs and cultural disruption in the price of traded goods and
services, will continue to cause more harm than good." | Peter F. Drucker takes a slightly pre-web look at The Age of Social Transformation.
| "The function of government and its functioning must be central
to political thought and political action. The megastate in which
this century indulged has not performed, either in its totalitarian
or in its democratic version. It has not delivered on a single one
of its promises." | Further to, and more recently than the above, the same wise Drucker examines The Global Economy and the Nation-State.
| "The rules of total war are so firmly established by now that most people take them to be akin to laws
of nature. With missiles, satellites, and nuclear weapons, there can be no return to the
nineteenth-century belief that the military's first task is to keep war away from the country's civilians.
In modern war, there are no civilians. | What can be most fervently hoped for is The End of Work - The Decline of the Global Labor Force and
The Dawn of the Post-Market Era, as this compilation of quotes from Jeremy Rifkin's book clearly illustrate.
| "We are, indeed, experiencing a great historic
transformation into a Third Industrial Revolution and
heading inexorably toward a nearly workerless world." | Fear not the big picture, nor the rather wordy title, as this essay is a clear exposition of our species current dire situation; and an invitation to resolution. Esoteric Anthropology: "Devolutionary" and
"Evolutionary"
Orientations in Perennial Philosophy
| "One consequence of this modern spiritual dead-end is a reaction which has
taken the form of a flourishing anti-intellectualism manifested in superstitious
techniques to ward off fears, in naive fundamentalism, and in authoritarian cults." |
The sounds of the spheres seem to be inherant. That we cannot decipher our genetic relative's music with any kind of accuracy does not bode well for our first contact with something truly alien. Music without Borders asks: when a white-breasted wood wren trills Beethoven, is it music?
| "In all the theorizing over the nature of music, Baptista urges listeners to
remember the plight of the musicians. A quail species that Beethoven,
Schubert, and Haydn all echoed in their compositions has disappeared in
parts of Europe, he laments. The Soccorro mockingbirds, which sing in
counterpoint, are losing habitat to sheep." |
The Conophobia Journals
| "Remember the children, and strive to make this
country a better place, where men and women can walk the
streets without fear of obstruction by Cones, and where we
can drive wherever we like quickly and safely, and above
all, without having to Keep Left." | Here is the fascinating story of how the Electronic Frontier Foundation raised the level of honesty in crypto politics, and gave us all cause to pause.
| "From the floor of the RSA Data Security Conference & Expo, a major data security and cryptography conference being held in San Jose, Calif., EFF's DES Cracker and the Distributed.Net computers were testing 245 billion keys per second when the key was found." | I think most of us create our own soundscape, or endure that imposed by kids, dogs, neighbors and other such cyberdetractors, while we are occupied on the internet. Erik Davis looks at Acoustic Cyberspace.
| "Acoustic space is capable of simultaneity, superimposition, and nonlinearity, but above
all, it resonates." | Le Monde Diplomatique has a wealth of articles translated to english, including Operation Terminator, which warns against the coming attempts to mediocritize and control our food.
| "The genetic-industrial complex, for its part, is trying to make more and more money. Confusing the agent with the cause, it drums into us that these social ills are genetic and therefore individual, transforming every well individual into a potential patient, expanding the market to the limit - as it previously did for seed with hybrids and as it will with Terminator." | The Global Intelligence Center, perhaps better described as 'what's really going on out there', is a huge resource that literally (un)covers global insanity.
| "According to recent reports, Russia's population shrinks by about 2,500 every day. To successfully counter greater threats with fewer people, Russian foreign policy must become
even more unyielding." | This sad commentary is more like what passes for global intelligence. Ex-President Ernesto Samper Pizano states Columbia's Commitment Toward a Global Agenda Against Drugs; and he also positively begs to be let in the club by toeing the PanoptiCorp line.
| "We must urgently advance the Global Agenda Against Drugs that Colombia proposes, and I encourage everyone to become involved in this process." | Steve Courtney writes a new review of an old bestseller which, to our common shame, was a bit optimistic.
'Looking Backward' to a brighter, better world in 2000
| "You choose your job according to "natural tastes and gifts." If there are too
many applicants for a job, only the best qualified get them, but less-attractive
jobs are made more attractive by shorter hours." | Dr. Bart Huges must have a hole in his head. This self-trepanner and sugar discussant believes that by inflicting The Hole To Luck one gains expanded consciousness and re-vitalization. Now, if I could use that brain-bung as an input jack for the orgasmotron....
| "I advocate the availability of trepanation for every adult who wants it." | A human who has the ear of President-Presumed Al Gore is Thomas Homer-Dixon. Do you think they ponder Resource Scarcity, Institutional Adaptation, and Technical Innovation: Can Poor Countries Attain Endogenous Growth?
| "Resource depletion and degradation in poor economies may have their most inimical effect not by directly constraining growth but by indirectly affecting the potential of these economies to innovate." | I can hear you asking: Who has better hearing, city or country folk?
| "The regional differences
were more pronounced in men than
in women." | Tofu may have a shrinking effect on the brain. I'll stick to fillet de moose.
| "This finding is consistent
with the environmental causation suggested from the earlier
analysis, and provides evidence that soy (tofu) phytoestrogens
causes vascular dementia." | A weird, rare find, this speech given by Robert G. Ingersoll to the AFA shows remarkable insight; especially since it was delivered in 1888.
| "Now, I believe that everything in the world that tends to make man happy, is moral. That is my
definition of morality. Anything that bursts into bud and blossom, and bears the fruit of joy, is moral." | I quit! Wait a minute, I don't have a job (if you hire me, I promise I'll quit...how much??). Ok, I quit quitting then, I just won't start, again, in the first place. Bob Black, clearly the antimedian to Conrad the UnKnighted, says no one should ever work. I concur, and await the conclusive end of re-perceived slavery. Genuine novelty ahead.
| "No one can say what would result from unleashing the creative power stultified by work. Anything can happen." | The Canadian Association of the Non-Employed has a fine article on Guaranteed Annual Income, or Non-Conditional Income, and gives me hope that Canada can take a world-leading approach on this critical issue.
When I expire I would like to think that my progeny, and theirs', could access these pages. A visit to Things to Do on the Web When You're Dead sets my mind at ease. Now, actually viewing these what will then be dated pages, may disturb them greatly...to think I lived in an age when certain states of consciousness were illegal, when children were dispatched to centralized schools and daycares, when GlobalCorp ensured that cheap labor was available, when the echoed horrors of the Century of Growth erupted in interminable spotfires, when we were all just beginning to feel and see what could be...
| "I was honored that my friend asked me to protect
something so precious to him, and I willingly
agreed. But I wonder how many people's sites are
simply being "turned off" when they no longer
have a voice (or a checkbook) to sustain them. I
keep thinking: If my grandparents had built a Web
site, wouldn't I want it archived and available on
the net in the years to come for my grandchildren?" | Nature's vacuum cleaners, but they don't do dust. Oh well, I live with two and have learned much. Like barbeque potato chips are not food, but cat feces is a delicacy. Like if you want to sniff a lady's crotch, just stink (sic) your honker right in there. Like, dogs are smart, man.
| "Csányi even goes so far as to compare canine attachment
with human love--empathy incarnate. Masson believes that
dogs could teach us a thing or two about love and, indeed,
may already have done so." |
Playing by Nature's Paradigm:
Systems Science and the Grateful Dead
| "It is my belief that the band (and others of their generation) did their best to live
less by the laws of Western civilization and more by the natural ways of the Universe-- what we
might call Nature's Paradigm." |
Decisions we make now will reverberate for generations, and may indeed define our evolution. Privacy for individuals is essential, as no pragmatic observer could envision a truly transparent, and therefore utterly tolerant, society. Should corporations enjoy the same right to complete privacy? What about our government? Is total privacy conducive to the needed trust for peace, or is it the divide that will allow GlobalCorp to conquer us all? Who Wants Privacy?
Spider Robinson has moved His Columnship from the peerless (ha!) Globe Conglomupire to the saner spacean of Galaxy, where may be found the never lost question to the answer "we just hate him!".
| "If we had (opted for an alternative OS), that
system might now be the de facto world standard instead of Windows. We
did not, in short, have to settle for 32-bit extensions and a graphical shell
for a 16-bit patch to an 8-bit operating system originally coded for a 4-bit
microprocessor, written by a 2-bit company that can't stand 1-bit of
competition." | Where I live it is prudent to have a healthy fear of grizzly bears. Where you live it may be equally prudent to be wary of the hunters of the urban forest. But I don't think I would walk in the Yukon bush in the summer if the news broadcasts were full of bears "disemboweling and eating human" stories. Skeptical Enquirer reviews The Culture of Fear:
Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things
by Barry Glassner.
Summerhill School was a place of my dreams as a child. Stuck in the factory-school culture of Western education and having been entheogenically awakened (giving away my age this was 1970), it was torturous to know what could be but wouldn't.
| "Summerhill children are coming to the House of Commons, on
15th and 16th March, to have their voices heard. The children are
angry that they have not been listened to. The process that is
threatening to close their school, the oldest children's
democracy in the world, has ignored the children's voices." |
If a child watches 4 hours of TV a day, that would be about 1 hour of commercials as well as sundry product tie-ins and products that are shows. Now if I take my child and spend 5 minutes every day going over Consumer Angst, or similar material, I'd probably be branded as a crank.
| "It is very likely that most of your dissatisfactions are a carefully engineered
preparation for consumerism. So examine your dissatisfactions – keep only those
that, if discarded, might kill you. Toss the rest." | Although presented some days early, I have never been one for temporal location. The Pliocene Pussycat Theory postulates that the survival of our particular branch of homonid was enhanced, or indeed made possible by Felis catus.
| "I have already demonstrated how australopithecines could have met their food needs
by use of the cat and how they could have used cats for defense, now I will show
how they could have used cats for night time shelter." | Tao Site, www.tao.ca, presents the egalitarian web as it (c)should be.
| "Tao Communications is a regional federation comprised of local
autonomous collectives and individuals. We organize networks in order to
defend and expand public space and the right to self-determination. We
create knowledge through independent public interest research, and
distribute it freely through participatory education." | How often does reading an article actually change how you behave? You want to decide whether to take an umbrella? It may not be your best bet to listen to the weather forecast. Base-rate errors and weather forecasts provides the dry facts, and useful understanding for my wetware.
Grinning Idiot Press brings us Why I have been studying Vampires since 1972. When I was done reading this short essay I was grinning like an idiot; but then it hit me, my ex is a robot.
Douglas Valentine has been close to the King family, doing research for them, and here provides a good synopsis of Who Killed Martin Luther King.
Sally Lerner told us a decade ago about where the (un)employment scene was going, and must go if we are to be a sustainable society. In The Future of Work in North America; Good Jobs, Bad Jobs, Beyond Jobs we are led to a world in which education and employment have been repercieved.
| "No democratic society is sustainable that refuses to face and deal with the basic needs of its citizens.
Rapid technological change and the globalization of economic activity are re-structuring the North
American economy, and with it the nature and future of work in the United States and Canada." | Minions by any other name, those of the ether-elite play by the same ethical standards as their material counterparts. Which means that most of those in the internet business, or the business of the internet, are The Cyberdamned.
| "Richard Howard, a former employee, is dubious about the revolutionary
character of social relations in the new economy: "We basically did drone
work and had people breathing down our necks all the time. How
revolutionary is that? The only difference is that a lot of supervisors had
pierced ears and wore leather." " | A teacher and his class determined to put Nicola Tesla in his proper historical place, and we all can wonder why he has been Erased at the Smithsonian.
| "Tesla died January 7, 1943, alone, and all but forgotten, in a New York hotel
room, paid for by a meager stipend provided by a foreign government." | Give Brain Food a chance to load and your intellicart will be overflowing with cerebral fodder. This is an incredible compendium of essays, humor, and verrry scarrry things. "What becomes of the surplus of human life? It is either, 1st. destroyed by infanticide, as among the Chinese and Lacedemonians; or 2d. it is stifled or starved, as among other nations whose population is commensurate to its food; or 3d. it is consumed by wars and endemic diseases; or 4th. it overflows, by emigration, to places where a surplus of food is attainable."
James Madison, 1791 |  I am bitter with poverty today, even while remaining amazed at life in general, and mine in particular. My personal travails are of little consequence in the grand scheme but do provide me with deep acquaintance of how it feels, as well as an abiding desire to erase it's causes. Freedom from Poverty: A Fundamental Human Right Human rights and sustainable human development are interdependent and mutually reinforcing.
In the preface to his book The Future of Money: Beyond Greed and Scarcity, Bernard Lietaer concludes that we must re-invent our understanding of wealth. | "This book is therefore about money. But not about how to make, invest, or spend money. Not even about how we do, can or should relate to money. There are already plenty of good books about all that. This is about the concept of money itself, how the current system affects our societies, and about how we can rethink and redesign it for different collective purposes." | One obvious yet hotly decried solution is that of a Guaranteed Annual Income. The Calvinist ethic must give way to repercepted wealth.
Robert Theobald, an economist, reminds us in Toward Full Unemployment that we should put down the tool when we've finished the job. | "We are now at the point where we need to understand the concept of wage slavery. Failure to do this will bind people to employers just as firmly as chattel slavery bound slaves to their owners. It is our responsibility to open this debate in ways which do not lead to the same level of anguish and bitterness as started the civil war." | Spread the posi-meme of random acts of kindness and play the Generosity Game. More fulfilling than a win at solitair, less psychically destructive than snakes and ladders, astounding in anonymity yet intensely personal. Just do it. All you need is love.
John McCain is a hawk in the drug war, espouses 'family values', and doesn't have a clue about real families or drug use and abuse. Co-opting Cindy McCain's addiction and recovery for political gain while the poor and non-influential are in jail for the same "criminal" behavior, he exemplifies cynical hypocrisy. Stanton Peele writes a telling piece originally printed in Los Angeles Times, February 14, 2000. | "In other words, Cindy McCain was using drugs while raising small children, one of whom she adopted while she was an addict. In most states, family services will remove children from a woman who is known to be an active drug addict, and she would certainly not be allowed to adopt a child while addicted." | Human rights, as charity, should begin at home. The situation in the U.S., never anything to brag about, seems to be getting worse. Would any Presidential candidate care to take this issue front and center? | "On December 10, 1998, President Bill Clinton issued an executive order affirming the U.S. commitment to honor its obligations under the international human rights treaties to which it is a party. By doing so, the president raised expectations that the United States would begin to embrace international human rights standards at home, ending the country's longstanding failure to acknowledge human rights law as U.S. law. As 1999 ended, however, little progress stemming from the executive order was apparent. Most public officials remained either ignorant of their human rights obligations or content to ignore them." | Father, son and the holy dollar "Five years ago it still remained possible to occupy a third position in the world, a neither/nor of refusal or slyness, a realm outside the dialectic--even a space of withdrawal;--disappearance as will to power."
"But now there is only one world--triumphant "end of History", end of the unbearable pain of imagination--actually an apotheosis of cybernetic Social Darwinism. Money decrees itself a law of Nature, and demands absolute liberty." | Snakes and rapids and paradise, Oh my! Bill Belleville writes a wonderful tale of adventure in Guyana, and leaves me wondering what's in the yellow mustard. | "And then, as if to shatter any shards of ethnocentricity I might have remaining: "Sometimes, visitors bring photographs and you see the concrete jungles and understand what can happen to a place when the people forget what is important." | I am not a vegetarian, but I would much rather eat a roast from an ex-cow that was happy in life. In our economy of scale, my ex-mooing munch is just another commodity; hamburger on the hoof. At MeatStinks.com an antimeme approach is used to get across that non-human animals have rights too, and the Lettuce Ladies show how to educate with veggies.
For a reason I can't quite put my finger on, or my arm around, I wanted to find out what research in human pheremone response has discovered. Perhaps the anecdotal evidence is best. | "I love to see a lady with hairy armpits. Especially sweaty, hairy pits that get all matted down from the wetness, either from a hot, humid day, or during lovemaking. The scent of the sweat gives me tremendous arousal, and I enjoy mutual licking of each others armpits." | | "The National Security State is gearing up for infowar, and some of their proposals may have serious repercussions on your digital freedom." | National Security and the Information Revolution is a well presented case for vigilance.
He has seen the future, and it is murder. Eight years on, and Leonard Cohen's words and music are still urging us to look. The following snippet is from Democracy, and is most apt in this year of democracy's test. From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A | Strategic Issues Today provides unique insight into how America conducts its foriegn affairs. | "Rhodes, ultimately, was "bottom-line" oriented, seeking to control gold, diamonds and other natural resources. The current crowd seeks to control government and to "tax" corporations by many "positive" and "negative" means (including class-action and anti-trust litigation) as their means of establishing government and bureaucratic control over a global economy that is less and less dependent on government." | Mindless in America points out that much of our daily grind is performed autonomically. So, if you're here, now, pay attention, eh!?!
Thanks to my friend William for directing me to Could Gambling Save Science, which reminds us that popular science isn't always right science; and proposes a market type approach - "idea futures". Following up on this idea (erk) Tom W. Bell poses Hard Questions; Questionable Answers. | "The state that takes the initiative in encouraging the first real market in idea futures has much to gain and nothing to lose. By hosting the first idea futures market, it will inextricably associate itself with a cutting-edge, high-tech institution that will enjoys the attention of policy-makers, researchers, and journalists everywhere." | The Halcyon Cosmopolitan Entertainment is sporting a new url and has an absolutely first rate collection of connections. In the same vein but with a more direct focus is The One behind the Many, subtitled The Purporsive Evolution and Involution of Consciousness in the Universe. These are both jumping off points of the first water for all "Homo Noeticus" potentiates.
Toxins from Russia drop on Alaska and Yukon, middle America pollutes southern Ontario and Quebec, and those sausages I ate are dead, processed bio-concentrators chock full of chemical yummies. Did you know that humans are taking longer to decompose due to preservative consumption? At chem-tox.com you can get the motivation to perform a self-purification ritual. | "Illnesses now identified include brain cancer, neuroblastoma, neurological disorders, immune system dysfunction, asthma, allergies, infertility, miscarriage, and child behavior disorders including learning disabilities, mental retardation, hyperactivity and ADD" | One question that must be dealt with is whether the advances in bio-implants, cybernetics and so on, are to be equitably distributed. In A Question for Egalitarians, Samuel Freeman refutes the status quo and proves the trickle-down theory as only fit for weak prostates. | "A social system set up to award the great proportion of primary social goods to those already most favored by birth only compounds the misfortune of the worse off, and doubly rewards those already naturally (or socially) favored." | The Basic Psychological Features of E-Mail Communication is analytical, yet simple. | "Some people take advantage of this convenient "zone for reflection." Some do not. When I receive a message that emotionally stirs me up, I apply my "Hold On!" rule of thumb. I compose a reply without sending it (or write nothing), wait 24 hours, then go back to reread the other person's message and my unsent reply." | With the widespread and often indefensible use of the drug ritalin to deal with attention deficit disorder, our children are in an untenable position. Already abused by the adult econoculture and forced into factory schools, those afflicted are then drugged into a submission supported by all those in power. A group that gets very little attention indeed are students with internalizing disorders such as depression, anxiety, and social withdrawal.
Virtually everyone was surprised by the relatively calm fall of communism in 1989. | "(Here is) - "evidence which explains in the actual words of Communist leaders now for the first time in English how the system imposed by Stalin's armies gave way in the face of popular protest, largely without violent repression." | The NSA Declassified, The Documents | "The particularly sensitive nature of communications intelligence (COMINT) activities was highlighted by paragraph 6, which noted that such activities should be treated "in all respects as being outside the framework of other or general intelligence activities." Thus, regulations or directives pertaining to other intelligence activities were not applicable to COMINT activities." | Bruce Grierson forges ahead to see Shock's Next Wave, and the view ain't pretty. This is from Adbusters. | "I'm going to argue that there are now three levels of shock in advertising: visceral shock, intellectual shock and, for lack of a better term, "soul" shock." | "The grim story began on July 20, 1950..."; and it still continues in ways that we are of course unaware of in the present. Perhaps a lesson that can be taken from A History of Secret CIA Mind Control Research is that power should only be given to those who do not want it. This article from Nexus magazine is subtitled Techniques used by Government agencies for mind control.
Putting our focus of attention on creating ever more efficient instruments of war incalculably diminishes our vision of peace. In this proposal from the USAF we can learn how billions of tax dollars are spent on research to ensure military superiority.
Chaos Politics is one of the websays available at Essays on Conspiracy Culture. I'm conspirin' to make this my last conspiracy type link; but there's a conspiracy agin' me! | "Conspiracy theorists and hack politicos both make the same mistake about politics, a failure to acknowledge and understand it as a product of chaotic forces that are beyond control by individuals, organizations, or institutions." | If Al Gore could be perfectly honest about his past, and relate those experiences to his plans were he elected president, he might actually do a good job. A DRCNet Exclusive by Adam J. Smith, reports the story Newsweek wouldn't.
Ideas that sounded good to the inventor but not to(o) many others may be found at the Gallery of Obscure Patents; such as this flushable vehicle spittoon.  George Bush, Skull & Bones and the New World Order is a white paper that was destined for a Japanese audience. I am constitutionally repelled by conspiracy theories, if only because having people keep quiet about things is well nigh impossible and anyway, why ascribe intent to that which may be explained by chance. And yet.... | "The Skull & Bones members believe in the idea of "constructive chaos." By keeping their true policy intentions secret, by constantly sending out mixed signals on all critical policy issues, they consciously seek to sow confusion among both their nominal "friends" and "enemies" alike." | We're hit, we're hit!! A meteorite flared across our skies this morning creating a bright light, a remarkable smoke trail, some said a sulpherous odor. and general excitement. Impacting or disintegrating near the town of Carcross, Yukon, it may have also caused a power surge as we lost our power at that exact time. If a larger sized meteorite were to strike a populated area the damage could be considerable. We may be able to prevent an asteroid from intercepting us, but I don't think we'd even see a meteorite coming. *News just in - the object detonated about 25km up and 9km from Carcross with an energy of about 1/10 that of the Hiroshima bomb. Word has it that a meteorite of this size strikes the earth about once per year.*
How cold is cold? It was cold here last week, bottoming out at -43C here in Whitehorse, but that is a walk in the park compared to a warm day on Mars. This got me thinking about self-contained biospheres or perhaps integrated eco-strings or, what I'm planning here, a co-existent intrasphere. Is that the eventual future of cities?
I imagine that if one took the arms dealers and manufacturers of North America out of the world market and then fully legalized hemp and cannabis, we could really watch our economy grow. Instead we make destruction of life attractive. Counter Punch looks at The Arms Pushers.
| "Seraphic pork. John Travolta stars as a dirty, bellicose, beer-bellied angel -- wings and all -- who summons three tabloid journalists to an Iowa motel in Nora Ephron's forcedly magical drama." | If you like movie reviews with spunk, then Rob Walton's The Big Picture will help you empty the popcorn bowl. If you know the name of the movie that that review excerpt is referring to, I'm sorry.
Oxymoronic word pairs always promise to be interesting, and Empirical Metaphysics certainly doesn't disappoint. | "Universe : Physics = People : Empirical Metaphysics" | According to this report by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) there are a huge number of characteristics of doomsday religious movements. This one seems characteristic of the CSIS itself. | "Dualism - The belief that the world is fractured into two opposing camps of Good and Evil, which confers a profound significance on small social and political conflicts as evidence of this great cosmic struggle, and which could precipitate a violent response." | At the individual level, some believe that deprogramming is the responsible response to a loved one's spiritual transgressions. Others see that as kidnapping and enforced reacculturation. The Judges say....
Perhaps an ultimate answer could be had by consulting with an Omniscient Psychologist!
There's nothing like a good mystery, and I've been drawn into researching "Camp X" by a show during spy week on the History channel. Here is the book Inside - Camp X. The mystery now is, where is chapter 1?
Cheri Honkala gives a deeply poignant account of life immersed in a culture of poverty, in a presentation to the Hague Appeal for Peace.
A prize to die for is the Darwin Award, which celebrates contributions to genetic excellence. " Winners minimized their own genetic contribution by suffering idiotic and fatal misadventures, thereby dousing our gene pool with chlorine."
The new Atlantic Monthly has a great look at diffusionist versus independent inventionist views of Old and New World contact; or lack thereof. I wonder, if there was significant pre-1492 contact, why had the new world inhabitants not developed antibodies to the old world diseases they would also have contacted.
Utopias provide hope for the suffering, mental mastication for the intellectual, power for the dictator, delusions for the masses and fodder for the writer. Pie in the sky and all, Steven Weinberg looks at the future of utopian thinking. From the Atlantic Monthly as well.
Donald A. Wollheim writes: "The struggle to see whether these newly created mechanisms, these new arts, new sciences--electronics, plastics, chemistry, invention, power transportation, super communication, biologic discoveries to see whether they will compel man to alter himself and his society, his customs and traditions, to suit them or whether they can be forced to serve man without exacting some adjustment in turn." Written in 1941 for Cosmic magazine, we can see that little has changed. From the same deep well at Virginia Tech's Speculative Fiction Project comes an idea for marketing the latest technology - I could sure use a new desk!
Never did like the walrus or the carpenter much. Ken Walton provides a welcome rebuttal.
Something the FBI would rather you didn't know about is the Bovine Insurrection. There's even a dandy Bovinational Anthem called Cows With Guns.
While listening to the radio this morning I heard about some countries preparing for Internet War. Some limited battles may have already been waged, and many of the programs we all use have deep vulnerabilities; intentional (such as trap doors) or not. TheWar, Peace and Security site, from the Canadian Armed Forces provides a map of current conflicts. Few of these combatants are major players in the internet, yet.
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