Saturday, April 23, 2005

HOW THEY BROUGHT THE REAL BAD NEWS
If this is true, and the oil has peaked, THEY know it, and are preparing for the next phase. Which is the wealthy enclaves and the Global Police State. The moves are being made from Homeland Security to God. And if you disagree I’d be real happy to hear it, because this is really the bad Bladerunner shit. Of course, the story is from Al Jeezera so treat as your prejudices feel fit.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/08B97BCF-7BE6-4F1D-A846-7ACB9B0F8894.htm

kaymo comments...
Think what this means...no Saudi super-production to rescue the global economy. No wonder Blair & Co. are waiting until after the election to present a huge ramp up of Nuclear Power in the UK.

The secret word is Fucked

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

STILL REACTING TO RATZINGER
Looking at first responses to Pope Ratzinger, I still haven’t formulated my reaction except a quaint old-fashioned prejudice against anyone with Nazi affiliations, no matter how briefly they partied for the Fuhrer. For now I’m happy to leave it to Maureen Dowd in this mornings NYT, one of the only in print to not be lauding the former Hitler Youth...

"The white smoke yesterday signaled that the Vatican thinks what it needs to bring it into modernity is the oldest pope since the 18th century: Joseph Ratzinger, a 78-year-old hidebound archconservative who ran the office that used to be called the Inquisition and who once belonged to Hitler Youth. For American Catholics - especially women and Democratic pro-choice Catholic pols - the cafeteria is officially closed. After all, Cardinal Ratzinger, nicknamed "God's Rottweiler" and "the Enforcer," helped deny Communion rights to John Kerry and other Catholic politicians in the 2004 election. "

The only consolations I can find right now is that Pope Ratzinger will not be in any holy circle jerk with the fascist evangelicals, and the No-Popery Wing of the Fundamentalist Right will be praising the Lord for passing them a shitload of ammunition.

The secret word is Heil!

QUOTE OF THE DAY
"Think I’ll take some pills and go to bed/Might get lucky and wind up dead." – Mick Farren
1976.
JUST IN TIME FOR ADOLF’S BIRTHDAY
Hey, not only do we have a Pope, but one whose formative philosophies were formed in the Hitler Youth. This bastard will really fit with the current trends in the Global Power Structure. As my mind boggles on this planet of AIDS and overpopulation, my first reaction is that the College of Cardinals must be out of their fucking minds. Fuck ‘em and the white smoke they went up in.

The secret word is Inquisition

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

DAN DARE NEVER HAD THESE PROBLEMS
I can only reflect that this modern wonderworld of high technology seems to be higher maintenance than having a former lap dancer for a mistress. (Something I have mercifully managed to avoid.) None of this was ever predicted in Dan Dare – Pilot of the Future.
And for those of you who don’t have a clue what I’m talking about Dan Dare POTF was a strip in a comic called The Eagle, set in the first decade of the 21st century, and, as a very small child who had just learned to read, (yes, there were printing presses back then) I was totally obsessed by it and wanted to be The Mekon. In that future now the Earth was happy, war was outlawed, the UN was in charge, everything was clean and ran on safe nuclear energy, and all humanity had to worry about was invasion by the evil Treens from Venus – led of course by The Mekon. (Start to get my drift?) Of course, rock & roll had never been invented so I couldn’t win ‘em all.

For more on D. Dare – http://www.dan-dare.org/

SWITCHING THE TOPIC JUST SLIGHTLY
The April 2005 edition of the Scientific American had an editorial that kinda says it all.

Okay, We Give Up
There's no easy way to admit this. For years, helpful letter writers told us to stick to science. They pointed out that science and politics don't mix. They said we should be more balanced in our presentation of such issues as creationism, missile defense and global warming. We resisted their advice and pretended not to be stung by the accusations that the magazine should be renamed Unscientific American, or Scientific Unamerican, or even Unscientific Unamerican. But spring is in the air, and all of nature is turning over a new leaf, so there's no better time to say: you were right, and we were wrong. In retrospect, this magazine's coverage of socalled evolution has been hideously one-sided. For decades, we published articles in every issue that endorsed the ideas of Charles Darwin and his cronies. True, the theory of common descent through natural selection has been called the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time, but that was no excuse to be fanatics about it. Where were the answering articles presenting the powerful case for scientific creationism? Why were we so unwilling to suggest that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago or that a cataclysmic flood carved the Grand Canyon? Blame the scientists. They dazzled us with their fancy fossils, their radiocarbon dating and their tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles. As editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence. Moreover, we shamefully mistreated the Intelligent Design (ID) theorists by lumping them in with creationists. Creationists believe that God designed all life, and that's a somewhat religious idea. But ID theorists think that at unspecified times some unnamed superpowerful entity designed life, or maybe just some species, or maybe just some of the stuff in cells. That's what makes ID a superior scientific theory: it doesn't get bogged down in details. Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody's ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts. Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do. Indeed, if politicians or special-interest groups say things that seem untrue or misleading, our duty as journalists is to quote them without comment or contradiction. To do otherwise would be elitist and therefore wrong. In that spirit, we will end the practice of expressing our own views in this space: an editorial page is no place for opinions. Get ready for a new Scientific American. No more discussions of how science should inform policy. If the government commits blindly to building an anti-ICBM defense system that can't work as promised, that will waste tens of billions of taxpayers' dollars and imperil national security, you won't hear about it from us. If studies suggest that the administration's antipollution measures would actually increase the dangerous particulates that people breathe during the next two decades, that's not our concern. No more discussions of how policies affect science either, so what if the budget for the National Science Foundation is slashed? This magazine will be dedicated purely to science, fair and balanced science, and not just the science that scientists say is science. And it will start on April Fools' Day.
Okay, We Give Up
– Matt Collins the Editors editors@sciam.com

OR, FROM ANOTHER ANGLE
"According to legend Odin hung from the tree of life for 3 days and nights to wrest the secrets of the runes from the Norns - losing an eye in the process. He must have been really pissed to discover you can buy them in Borders for $19.99 complete with a velveteen carrying bag."

MACUSERS
I know you all mean well when you tell me "Mick get a Mac", but if I hear it one more time, I will make like the sexblog ladies and suggest you all send me five bucks. (But I’d only keep the PC and spend the money on drugs.)

The secret word is Embattled

Sunday, April 17, 2005

I MUST HAVE MORE POWER TO THE SHIELDS, MR SCOTT!
I have failed to achieve much this weekend because my computer has been under intense and constant attack by viruses for the last 72 hours. My paranoia is as famous as I am, but when – mentored by a immensely patient and determined lady cyber-sensei at Microsoft – I have slaughtered more than 50 trojans on my hard drive since Friday, plus many hundreds of related items, and when detective logic tentatively suggests the first assault inflitrated through Blogger, I have to wonder. I do rather go out of my way to offend people, and many have more than enough advanced tech to fuck with me. Random or deliberate, I’m kinda fried, and my computer feels like the Millennium Falcon after a bad brush with Imperial cruisers. Fun will resume once I’ve written Mick’s Media for next week and conducted damage control. In the meantime, if you haven’t read this killer bit by Frank Rich from the NY Times, do so...

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/opinion/17rich.html?pagewanted=2&th&emc=th

The secret word is Countermeasures