HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL WHO ENTER HERE

The coming year and the coming decade are clearly going to be a challenge of the most major kind, and I suspect that many of us will be advancing into this temporal double whammy with at least a measure of grim determination, high on anxiety and short on frolic. But the madness of King George and his sinister acolytes is over, the planet still turns, and we can only move forward with hope and determination to salvage a better one out of the debris. I’m not sure how, and the only reason why is that we have no other alternative. All I know is that I will be following the time honored imperative of Mr. Natural and continuing to quest into the unknown, plying the old trade, singing the old songs, and hoping that the combination will inspire and made some small difference. Viddy well my droogs. We have nothing to lose but our pain. (Unless it’s our brains.) So, 2010, bring it on, you bastard!

The secret word is still Hope

RADIATION

As I recover from whatever laid me low, the Dark Matter is back…
“Deep inside an abandoned iron mine in northern Minnesota, physicists may have spotted the clearest signal yet of dark matter, the mysterious stuff that is thought to make up 90 per cent of the mass of the universe. The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) collaboration has announced that its experiment has seen tantalising glimpses of what could be dark matter. The CDMS-II experiment operates nearly three-quarters of a kilometre underground in the Soudan mine. It is looking for so-called weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), which are thought to make up dark matter.
The experiment consists of five stacks of detectors. Each stack contains six ultra-pure crystals of germanium or silicon at a temperature of 40 millikelvin, a touch above absolute zero. These are designed to detect dark matter particles by looking at the energy released when a particle smashes into a nucleus of germanium or silicon.” Click here for more.

The secret word is Spooky

ROMANCE

The following food for cynicism comes from Delancey Place.

"In the terrain of the human heart, scientists tell us, at least three independent but interrelated brain systems are at play, all moving us in their own way. To untangle love's mysteries, neuroscience distinguishes between neural networks for attachment, for caregiving, and for sex. Each is fueled by a differing set of brain chemicals and hormones, and each runs through a disparate neuronal circuit. Each adds its own chemical spice to the many varieties of love. Attachment determines who we turn to for succor; these are the people we miss the most when they are absent. Caregiving gives us the urge to nurture the people for whom we feel most concern. When we are attached, we cling; when we are caregiving we provide. And sex is, well, sex. ... Neuroscientist Jaak Pansepp ... finds a neural corollary between the dynamics of opiate addiction and the dependence on the people for whom we feel our strongest attachments. All positive interactions with people, he proposes, owe [at least] part of their pleasure to the opioid system, the very circuitry that links with heroin and other addictive substances. ... Even animals, he finds, prefer to spend time with those in whose presence they have secreted oxytocin and natural opioids, which induce a relaxed serenity - suggesting that these brain chemicals cement our family ties and friendships as well as our love relationships." – from Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence

ROCK & ROLL

Elf Hellion sent me this highly complimentary link…
“One of the most influential bands of the English Underground were Mick Farren and the Deviants, it's what we listened to in bedsits and cellars in the converted Victorian houses in Erdington back then. Ok, it wasn't Ladbrook Grove or Notting Hill the epicentres of the London based anarchist underground movement of the mid-to-late 60s and the stomping ground of Mick Farren, this wasn't happening in 'Swinging London'. But it was plugged into a much wider network across Europe, North America, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and way beyond and it sets the tone for the late 1960s very well I think. Mick Farren was influential in the underground press and music scene in England during the 1960s writing regularly in International Times and other samizdat publications. As one of the first proto-punk bands Mick Farren and the Deviants were about ten years ahead of their time when they made their first album in 1967. To me this is what the 1960s were really about... the countercultures that existed in what was a revolutionary time and very exciting time to be young.” Click Here for more and also an interesting video for my old song “I Don’t Want To Go This Way”

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Junie and Joanie Frozdick had perfected the Radium Gun.

(Image lifted from Tom Sutpen.)

DOC40 IS RESTING

I seem to have gone down with some nasty but scarcely life-threatening virus. With luck all will be back to normal in a day or so.

But I don't have the strength to panic.

SPACE OPERA

But how would they mix with gin he asks from his sickbed?