“KILL THE GREEN DRAGON”

It’s a sad thought for Easter weekend, what with the bunnies and eggs and all, but there’s now a fundamentalist Christian movement – funded by the oil barons – dedicated to countering all environmental protections. They call it “killing the green dragon” and appear to believe that their god fully sanctions the corporate and systematic rape of the planet.

“Buoyed by corporate finances and a radical ‘dominion theology,’ the Religious Right has become more aggressive and fanatical in its defense of corporations and denial of climate science. Trying to combat the increasing number of evangelical Christians who are part of the “creation care” movement that is calling for a greater commitment to combat climate change, the Religious Right is working to misrepresent the environmental movement as dangerously deceitful, harmful to the poor and destructive to Christianity. In the last decade, as evangelical Christian leaders increasingly became involved in conservation, “creation care”and taking action against global climate change, the alarms went up in corporate America that many traditional members of the conservative coalition were becoming advocates for environmental protection. To counter the rise of the faith-based environmentalist Evangelical Climate Initiative, the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance emerged. The ISA, propped up by business interests including Exxon Mobile, has peddled misleading and false claims to make the case that climate change is a myth. In 2007, the ISA was renamed the Cornwall Alliance and became more belligerent and zealous in its anti-environmental activities. The Cornwall Alliance is led by E. Calvin Beisner, who believes that since God granted humans “dominion” over the earth, humans have a right to exploit all natural resources. As Randall Balmer writes in Thy Kingdom Come, Beisner “asserts that God has placed all of nature at the disposal of humanity.” Balmer quotes Beisner’s own summary of his dominion theology: “All of our acquisitive activities should be undertaken with the purpose of extending godly rule, or dominion.” As Balmer notes, “the combination of dominion theology from the Religious Right and the wise use ideology of corporate and business interests has created a powerful coalition to oppose environmental protection.” (Click here for more)

And while we’re on the subject of the environment, check out these videos of robots inside the Fukushima reators that were sent to us by the splendid Yukiko in Tokyo.

The secret word is Rancid

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Tyrone Frozdick was often mistaken for Peter Lorre.

THIS COULD EASILY BECOME A FETISH…

…IF YOU FOLLOW OUR LOGIC

(C)lick here for a Venus in Furs mighty remix

OMG, IT’S A RELIGIOUS HOLIDAY!

Here in the UK there’s no separation of church and state, but when the established religion – the C of E (what Eddie Izzard called The Murdering Bastard Religion) – was established to get Henry VIII a brand new, hot young wife (Ann Boleyn) nobody gets too bloody Mel Gibson about it and goes to the pub. Me? I went into a dark studio with guitarists and rehearsed for coming live performances, so just click here for some early Pink Floyd (from Jenny Spires), wonder at the universe and we’ll talk more tomorrow.

The secret word is Hammer

BUT WE DO HAVE THE LIVE BALD EAGLE BABIES CAM

Click here, it’s amazing and addictive and supplied by the wonderful Wendy

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR...

THE KILLER ROBOTS ARE COMING

Yes, my friends, it’s the Dark Side of the Singularity. If the Ministry of Defence are worried, so am I.

“The growing use of unmanned aircraft in combat situations raises huge moral and legal issues, and threatens to make war more likely as armed robots take over from human beings, according to an internal study by the Ministry of Defence. The report warns of the dangers of an "incremental and involuntary journey towards a Terminator-like reality", referring to James Cameron's 1984 movie, in which humans are hunted by robotic killing machines. It says the pace of technological development is accelerating at such a rate that Britain must quickly establish a policy on what will constitute "acceptable machine behaviour"."It is essential that before unmanned systems become ubiquitous (if it is not already too late) … we ensure that, by removing some of the horror, or at least keeping it at a distance, we do not risk losing our controlling humanity and make war more likely," warns the report, titled The UK Approach to Unmanned Aircraft Systems. MoD officials have never before grappled so frankly with the ethics of the use of drones. The report was ordered by Britain's defence chiefs, and coincides with continuing controversy about drones' use in Afghanistan, and growing Pakistani anger at CIA drone attacks against suspected insurgents on the Afghan borders.” (Click here for more)

Click here for an alternate take of Memo from Turner

The secret word is Davros

Elisabeth Sladen – RIP

I KNEW THERE WAS A REASON I DIDN’T GET UP BEFORE NOON

Maybe someone should pass this on to Lemmy who hasn’t slept since 1986.

"Not surprisingly, those who had eight hours of sleep hardly had any attention lapses and no cognitive declines over the 14 days of the study. What was interesting was that those in the four- and six-hour groups had P.V.T. results that declined steadily with almost each passing day. Though the four-hour subjects performed far worse, the six-hour group also consistently fell off-task. By the sixth day, 25 percent of the six-hour group was falling asleep at the computer. And at the end of the study, they were lapsing fives times as much as they did the first day. The six-hour subjects fared no better — steadily declining over the two weeks — on a test of working memory in which they had to remember numbers and symbols and substitute one for the other. The same was true for an addition-subtraction task that measures speed and accuracy. All told, by the end of two weeks, the six-hour sleepers were as impaired as those who, in another Dinges study, had been sleep-deprived for 24 hours straight — the cognitive equivalent of being legally drunk." (Click here for more)

YUP, I SECOND THAT

THESE ARE THE PENDERGRAFTS

But from cute kittens to very dubious humans. These white supremacists have a site on Blogger. Needless to say, there is no Content Warning. Here’s an excerpt…

“If you live in a majority white nation it may be difficult for you to comprehend the plight of our white brothers and sisters around the world. Even in "white" nations, we are soon to be the minority race. What does this matter? You may think to yourself. It matters a whole lot. Whether you like it or not, people of non-white heritage have a real hatred for those of European ancestry. (white people) White people make up less than 10% of the world's population. As our numbers continue to decline, and our borders become even more porous, where do you think that leaves white children. Do you think blacks, Asians, Mexicans, or Jews will create and organize world wide relief efforts to help save the remaining white children? Do you think they will set up Hollywood styled charities and host fabulous galas to raise money for the support of white children? Do you think the leading educators will prompt school children to save their pennies to be given to white heritage funds? Do you think scholarships for white children will be started? Do you think they will continue the mission that millions of white people have been involved in for thousands of years - the propagation of the Christian faith?”

Why don’t I flag then as offensive? Because I simply don’t engage in that kind of thing.

Click here for a rant by Little Andrew

And click here for a song from his sisters

TACKY BUT APT

LANDMINES SAVE PENGUINS

Here at Doc40 we really don’t like landmines, but sometimes some weird benefit can come from the most nasty nastiness. And we love Rock Hopper penguins.

"The Falklands War also left the penguins with a bizarre kind of habitat protection. During Argentina’s occupation of the islands, its military laid landmines along the beaches and pastureland near the capital city to deter the British from reclaiming the area. So far, those landmines haven’t killed anyone, but the well-marked and fenced-off explosive zones have made for prime penguin habitat. The penguins aren’t heavy enough to set off the mines, but because sheep and humans are, the little guys have to minefields all to themselves.” (Click here for much more)

Click here for John Lee Hooker

The secret word is Flightless

BOOP THE MOVIE

The idea of a live action Betty Boop movie strikes me as decidedly odd, an opinion that is not diminished by the trailer. Click here to see for yourself

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Edison Frozdick had the technology to rebuild himself.

GRATUITOUS BUNNY AND BONG

(No animals were stoned in the making of this blog.)

I FACE THE CENSORING ROBOT

Part of me accepts that Doc40 being slapped with a Blogger Content warning should be a badge of pride and a confirmation that what I’ve been doing for so long actually does set a much needed hepcat among the malevolent pigeons. Unfortunately that’s not the whole story. Since the damn thing appeared and I was branded as objectionable, hits on the blog have fallen off by some 30% because, as far as I can tell from the tracker, I no longer get any search engine referrals except for the simplest requests like “Doc40” or “Mick Farren”. All those searches that used to arrive looking for “Buddy Holly” or “FEMA death trains” have simply vanished. And that is a real piss-off, because Doc 40 has been going so long that it’s a weirdly random – but very extensive – free resource of information and images. It also means I am not garnering new readers and spreading the good word by these kind of referrals. What to do? Maybe I should switch to Wordpress as our friend Peromyscus has suggested in her comment, but I think for the moment I’ll wait and see what happens next. As our pal HCB put it in a comment yesterday, “Seems like there ought to be somebody you could contact for some kind of explanation about the new barrier--a bit of research is in order. Might make a nice piece as well.”

Click here for Normal

The secret word is Conundrum

And thank you all for all the support.

BUT AT LEAST I DON’T HAVE TO STACK CATS

Click here – it’s short attention fun

BORN TO BE WILD (INTERRUPTED)

DON'T YOU MISS THE 20TH CENTURY?

Click here for Moby Grape

GRATUITOUS DR. GREER

Clicking on Doc40 puts me in a foul mood, and I am now deliberately attempting to be objectionable. The Content Warning is pissing me off. It’s like a correct schoolmarm wagging a reproving finger at me, and I guess I’m taking it out on poor Germaine with this photo that our pal Jeff Dexter just unearthed. It will probably offend someone. But I’m also marking time as I figure out what the “objectionable content” fire curtain really means to the future conduct of Doc40. Already some negative ramifications – especially in the realm of search engines – need to be thought through. Meanwhile here is what Professor Greer is still writing about me after all these years.

“Russell Brand also reminds me of Mick Farren, former lead singer of a band called the Social Deviants, then just the Deviants, who ran with the Hell's Angels who did the security at Phun City, a rock festival he organised in 1970. Since those heady days, he has decamped to the US and written 23 novels, Wikipedia tells me, and "11 works of non-fiction including four on Elvis Presley and a plethora of poetry". Mick and I were as close as you can get at one time; I think he now thinks he invented me. Mick glued together a personality for himself out of a cluster of ready-made images - Elvis, the Fugs, Lou Reed, the Hell's Angels, Frank Zappa - all stewed in mockney. He was punk before punk, which was not surprising because he predicted punk. Like Brand, Farren had a tendency to get stopped by the police. He was mouthy, talked tough and was anything but. Brand's like that - not so much a Hell's Angel as a Hell's Cherub, with his short upper lip and habit of speaking through clenched teeth like a featherweight Tommy Cooper, dropping references to Schopenhauer and ball-bags in a breath, simply to amaze and appal.” (Click here for the rest)

But it’s just the old bitchy Bohemian world kids. You shoulda seen the Café Royal in 1897.

Click here for The Jive Bombers

The secret word is Impeded

BEAM ME UP! WE ALMOST HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY

UK Steve sent us this vital story because we both love this kind if thing.

“The mind-bending project, led by Noriyuki Lee at the University of Tokyo, could lead to the creation of super-powerful quantum computers and revolutionise the telecommunications industry. The team managed to teleport wave packets of light by destroying them in one place and re-creating them in another. It's an incredible process that means transmitting large volumes of complex quantum information could be quicker than is currently possible. The quantum physics term behind this experiment is 'entanglement'. It means that two particles can be bonded in such a way that even when separated by large distances, they are still linked. So what happens to one affects the other. The team linked packets of light to half a pair of entangled particles. They destroyed one of the particles and the light itself, leaving just one remaining particle. This particle still contained detailed information about the light which they could then use to rebuild the original particle. The process involves 'Schrodinger's cat'. Unfortunately it's not a real feline, but a hypothetical experiment first carried out in the 1935. Schrödinger envisioned in a cat in a sealed box with a small amount of radioactive material and a Geiger counter measuring radiation. If the atom decayed the counter would release cyanide into the box and kill the cat. According to quantum mechanics, the cat is neither dead nor alive. Until someone opens the box both possibilities exist. It's supposed to illustrate how in quantum mechanics particles can exist in suspended states of multiple possibilities. The team at the University of Tokyo were able to put the light wave in a 'Schrödinger's cat' state with the help of a machine simply called 'The Teleporter', and make it have two opposite phases at the same time. Professor Elanor Huntington, who was part of the research team, told ABC News: "What we've done is take a macroscopic beam of light and put it into a quantum superposition, which is extremely fragile, and teleported that from one place to another." Doing this demonstrates that - for the first time - blocks of complex quantum information can now be carried by light. "If we can do this, we can do just about any form of communication needed for any quantum technology," she said. Unfortunately the breakthrough doesn't mean we'll ever be able to transport human beings, Star Trek style. At present even bacteria is far too complex to be transported.” Written by Orlando Parfitt"

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Parfait Frozdick was not happy with her hair extensions.

I’M GETTING THE FUCK OUTTA HERE

Click for The Clash

SUNDAY BREAKFAST

Later today I shall meet the guitarists in the pub to plot our performing future, but in the meantime – as I rise to tea and impossibility, and since, among other motivations, I am still coming to terms with this weblog being branded objectionable after all these many years of Doc40 – I shall dwell on the tawdry, the tacky, the wholly synthetic, and the entirely implausible. A few days ago, our friend HCB remarked in an email that “the sluts we loved at 14 were the ones that made us the terrorists we are today.” The comment was in the specific context of a lady called Shirley Anne Field – a free-spirited Brit starlet of our youth – but it also applied in general terms to any cheap and gaudy desire. Although, of course, at 14, the sluts we loved were mainly imaginary figments of fiction, fantasy, Fredericks of Hollywood, ancient appliances, and very bad wall paper.

Click here for Ray

The secret word is Manmade

MARILYN SEZ...

“At least you don’t have to play paddleball for cowboys.”

ATLAS DATES

Ayn Rand fans have a dating site. I guess they need it after the Atlas Shrugged movie turned out to be a bigger debacle than Battlefield Earth. Claire Suddath of Time reports…

“There are about 12,700 dating profiles on the Atlasphere, which Joshua Zader, 37, founded in 2003 after attending a few Rand-related conferences. "I realized that all the single people were using the conferences to search for another Ayn Rand fan they could fall in love with," says Zader, who modeled the site after Match.com’s pay-to-view profile system. But the Atlasphere also functions as a social network (with some 22,000 nondating profiles) in which members can contribute essays and articles. I asked Zader how someone who espouses a me-first philosophy can also maintain a loving relationship. "Ayn Rand has a great quote in The Fountainhead," he told me. "She writes that a person cannot say ‘I love you’ without first being able to say the I.”

Click here to grok the fullness

GRATUITOUS SHIRLEY ANNE FIELD

A visual reference to clarify what we were talking about over breakfast.