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Thursday, July 01, 2010
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
LIP GLOSS OR KUCINICH?
I don’t blindly agree with Dennis Kucinich, but now we've used this cheap trick to gain your attention, check out his latest call for action.
“In a little more than a year the United States flew $12 billion in cash to Iraq, much of it in $100 bills, shrink wrapped and loaded onto pallets. Vanity Fair reported in 2004 that "at least $9 billion" of the cash had "gone missing, unaccounted for." $9 billion. Today, we learned that suitcases of $3 billion in cash have openly moved through the Kabul airport. One U.S. official quoted by the Wall Street Journal said, "A lot of this looks like our tax dollars being stolen." $3 billion. Consider this as the American people sweat out an extension of unemployment benefits. Last week, the BBC reported that "the US military has been giving tens of millions of dollars to Afghan security firms who are funneling the money to warlords." Add to that a corrupt Afghan government underwritten by the lives of our troops. And now reports indicate that Congress is preparing to attach $10 billion in state education funding to a $33 billion spending bill to keep the war going. Back home millions of Americans are out of work, losing their homes, losing their savings, their pensions, and their retirement security. We are losing our nation to lies about the necessity of war. Bring our troops home. End the war. Secure our economy."
Click here for gratuitous Zappa and the Captain
The secret word is Empire
Or does Facebook have you?
"WASHINGTON - June 29 - Late Monday, Facebook shut down the Boycott BP fan page, effectively locking out the page’s more than 700,000 members. After a backlash by users, Facebook reinstated the site this morning. Facebook has not said whether a complaint by BP prompted its decision to terminate the Boycott BP page. Regardless, Facebook’s decision to delete the page without warning or explanation was irresponsible. Facebook and other social websites have become the public squares of the Internet - places where citizens can congregate as a community to share their opinions and voice their grievances. Facebook’s ownership of this democratic forum carries great responsibility. At the very least, Facebook should provide warning and a reasoned explanation before destroying a large and active community. Although it is not clear whether BP is behind the page’s temporary removal, companies often complain to Facebook about fan pages that include their names. Here, nobody could be confused into believing that a page named “Boycott BP” is run by BP itself. People have a right to criticize a company by name, and BP has no right to stop it." Click here for more on BP boycott
Click here for something else BP might not want you to see.
BUT THE BACTERIA ARE TALKING
“Fundamental to computer science is transmitting information using electromagnetic communication - the 0s and 1s of binary code. But nature's tiniest lifeforms have used a very different method for eons, and figuring out how they do it could revolutionize computers. Bacteria make great use of what's known as molecular communication, in which they transmit and receive molecules to share information. One example of this is quorum sensing, where bacteria send around chemical signals to figure out their local population. This form of communication had long been ignored by information science, and it's only recently that the amount of information that can possibly be relayed using this method has been seriously considered.” (Click here for more)
I AM SO FUCKING JEALOUS
Click here for another Farren/Kilmister tune
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
THIS MAY NOT BE QUITE WHAT HAPPENED
This comes straight from the University of Gothenburg in godless socialist Sweden. It might well be that any historcal Jesus of Nazereth was excuted in a far more excruciatingly nasty manner than by just three nails and a hammer. Hints of Vlad Teppes creep into the picture.
“The many different accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus find little support in historical sources. The reason is that antique sources generally lack descriptions of crucifixions, says Gunnar Samuelsson, University of Gothenburg, who recently finished his doctoral thesis on the topic. Encyclopaedias, monographs and bible commentaries generally agree on the type of punishment Jesus had to endure on Golgotha in Jerusalem. There is an ample amount of very colourful accounts of crucifixions in the literature, and researchers from all kinds of disciplines seem to endorse them. 'The problem is that descriptions of crucifixions are remarkably absent in the antique literature,' says Samuelsson. 'The sources where you would expect to find support for the established understanding of the event really don't say anything.' The 400 page thesis offers the reader samples of antiquity's most terrifying texts and gives examples of mankind's amazing resourcefulness in terms of mind-boggling cruelty against fellow human beings. Samuelsson has studied the available ancient Greek, Latin and Hebrew/Aramaic literature all the way from Homer to the first century A.D. While the texts indicate a vast arsenal of suspension punishments, they do not say much about the kind of punishment the Christian tradition claims Jesus was forced to endure. The thesis clearly shows that although the studied texts are full of references to suspension of objects and the equipment used to this end, no reference is made to 'crosses' or 'crucifixion'. Samuelsson therefore concludes that the predominant account of the destiny of Jesus is not based on the antique texts, but rather on for example the tradition of the Christian church and artistic illustrations. 'Consequently, the contemporary understanding of crucifixion as a punishment is severely challenged. And what's even more challenging is that the same can be concluded about the accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus. The New Testament doesn't say as much as we'd like to believe', says Samuelsson.”
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The secret word is History
WE ARE QUITE POSSIBLY BEING DRIVEN MAD
And while in metaphysical mood, I also discovered the story below. For years I have been pointing out, often unbidden, that the Nazis’ industrialized holocaust might not have been so effortlessly contemplated had not Hitler and his henchmen already witnessed the industrialized holocaust on the Western Front during World War I. I reasoned that, once you’ve seen 80,000 men slaughtered in an afternoon, the rest is easy. Finally it seems that academia and The Boston Globe have caught up with me. I would question, though, if our current malaise might have more to do with a growing awareness of the imminent collapse of planetary environmental systems than US neo-colonial warfare, and that’s why so many folk want to escape either via The Rapture or the promised apocalypse of 2012.
“A psycho-medical diagnosis — post-traumatic stress syndrome — has gained legitimacy for individuals, but what about whole societies? Can war’s dire and lingering effects on war-waging nations be measured? Can the stories of war be told, that is, to include aftermath wounds to society that, while undiagnosed, are as related to civic responsibility for state violence as one veteran’s recurring nightmare is to a morally ambiguous firefight? The battle zones of Fallujah and Kandahar are far away, but how do their traumas stamp Philadelphia and Kansas City — this year and a decade from now? The US Civil War did not end in 1865. Its unleashed spirit of total destruction went west, and over subsequent decades Blue and Gray veterans savaged the remnant native peoples. The Indian Wars built upon Antietam and Shiloh. World War I was only the beginning of industrialized nihilism, with the decadence of the 1920s and the global collapse of order during the 1930s Depression coming in train with the civilizational suicides of the Somme and Verdun. The extremities of World War II generated a pathological paranoia in the Soviet Union, and a debilitating American insecurity that spawned, on one side, cultural banality, and, on the other, a garrison state. After Vietnam, citizens of all stripes proved permanently unable to trust their government. That killed shared meaning. America’s wars left moral wreckage in their wakes. The chop continues.” (Click here for the whole thing)
Image by David DeFigueredo
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Monday, June 28, 2010
POLICE PROCEDURAL
Nobody messes with the G20. They want all of us to know they run the goddamned planet. Got it?
“I called Naomi Archer to find out. She is an indigenous rights worker from North Carolina who happened to be giving a lecture on the Miami Model yesterday at the U.S. Social Forum — the G20 for community activists.Archer, who was in Miami as a liaison between protesters and police, has a 40-box checklist to identify the Model. Here are the main themes.
Information warfare. This starts weeks before the event. Protesters are criminalized and dehumanized, and described as dangerous “anarchists” and “terrorists” the city needs to defend against. “Often, a faux cache is found,” says Archer. “They are usually ordinary objects, like bike inner tubes, camping equipment, but the police make them out to look threatening. It lays the groundwork for police to be violent and it means there’s a reduced accountability of law enforcement.”
Intimidation. Police start random searches of perceived protesters before any large rallies. They are asked where they are staying, why they are walking around. Police raid organizer’s homes or meeting places, “usually just before the summit, so there’s maximum chaos organizers have to deal with,” says Archer. “All this is meant to dissuade participants. The best way to make sure you don’t have a critical mass of people taking over the streets like in Seattle is to reduce the numbers at the outset.” This is usually made possible by last-minute city regulations, curtailing the right to protest. In Miami, the city commission passed a temporary ordinance forbidding groups of more than seven to congregate for more than 30 minutes without a permit.
“They threw rocks.” That’s the line police use after tear-gassing or beating protesters most times, Archer says. Urine and human feces are variations on the theme. But it’s always the protesters who triggered the violence. A popular police tactic is called “kettling.” Officers on bike or horses herd protesters into an enclosed space, so they can’t leave without trying to break through the police line. Take the bait; you provoke a beating or arrest. And of course, there are the famous agent provocateurs, outted publicly two years ago in Montebello. Police officers dressed up like militant protesters to protect the peaceful crowd, they say; Archer says it’s to instigate trouble. In Montebello, one of the three cops dressed in black was holding a rock. “It’s the same lies every single protest,” she says. “It’s justification by law enforcement for their violent actions. This is a propaganda war.” (Click here for the whole thing)
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The secret word is Gassed
TEXAS OUTLAWS FUN
Forget the Alamo. No blowjobs, no gays, no strip clubs, no porn. Yellow roses are still permitted. I think. But don't even mention the revised school textbooks. Maybe it really is time for Texas to secede from the union and become one huge backward and benighted theocracy.
“The Texas Republican Party gives a whole new meaning to the word conservative. The GOP there has voted on a platform that would ban oral and anal sex. It also would give jail sentences to anyone who issues a marriage license to a same-sex couple (even though such licenses are already invalid in the state). “We oppose the legalization of sodomy,” the platform says. “We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S. Constitution to withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy.” The Lone Star state initially passed a law barring sodomy in 1860. Violators faced anywhere from five to 15 years in prison. The ban was overturned in 2003. In addition, the platform says that homosexuality “tears at the fabric of society, contributes to the breakdown of the family unit and leads to the spread of dangerous communicable diseases.” It also states that homosexuality must not be presented as an acceptable “alternative” lifestyle in public schools and “family” should not be redefined to include homosexual couples. The 25-page proposal, presented last week as a guide for the state GOP over the next two years, includes other measures including outlawing “sexually oriented businesses” like strip clubs and banning “all pornography.”
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A NEW MAGAZINE!
Sunday, June 27, 2010
SUNDAY BREAKFAST (with science)
"I sing the breakfast electric. In a world without pity, I mess with metres, in an ion-stream chaos divorced from dream. The eggs shoot sparks. Fires pattern the dark, visible from afar, all the way from Lucifer to Odin’s open bar. Yes, my human friends, I sing the breakfast electric supported by a lingering Tesla cruelty but mitigated by alternating leaves of grass. A crow and a bluejay square off in the window tree. They won’t back down nor pass. I sing the breakfast electric like the teenage girl who cuts herself to confirm that she can feel, but I’m still fucking sitting here pretending all is fucking real. I sing the breakfast electric to the bluejay and the crow, because I have a fragile suspicion that one of the them must know. But, damn it to hell, they won’t tell." (Image from Valerie)
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The secret word is Dazed
Saturday, June 26, 2010
WHAT? NO FAVA BEANS AND NO NICE CHIANTI?
Seemingly no one in authority figured this guy for a psycho. Reuters brings us this story of a fuck-up royale by the French penal system. Aren’t you glad it couldn’t happen here?
“Nicolas Cocaign and Thierry Baudry had a fight when Cocaign asked Baudry to wash his hands after he had used the toilet during the night of January 2, 2007. Cocaign strangled Baudry and cut open his chest with a razor blade. Thinking it was the heart, Cocaign then ripped out a piece of Baudry's lung and ate part of it raw before cooking the rest. "What I did, I liked doing," said Cocaign, 37, who has a shaved head and whose face is covered in tattoos. He will have to serve at least 20 years of his sentence. Aware of his impulses, Cocaign had requested psychiatric help in 1998 and asked to be placed in isolation in 2006. "It's exceptional to see a psychologically disturbed person say: I have to be treated," said defense lawyer Fabien Picchiottino, noting the "failure of the psychiatric, penitentiary and social system.”
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The secret word is Cuisine
REMEMBRANCES OF SPAM PAST (Lumberjack Pie)
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SPACE OPERA
Doc40 came in #45 in the Top 50 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blogs. Hardly the gold, but at least our little funhouse was on the board and it can only get better. (Farren having a rare and uncharacteristic flash of optimism.)
Click here for Catwomen of the Moon (Get well, Valerie)
Friday, June 25, 2010
2013 IS THE NEW 2012
Oh dear. Were the Mayans off by one year, or this the new Y2K?
“Concerns about the potential for an unprecedented assault from space were stoked last week by a report in London's Telegraph warning that a super storm could cause "catastrophic consequencies for the world's health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken." The warnings focus on the 2012-2013 time frame, because that's when the 11-year solar activity cycle is expected to peak. Back in 2006, solar scientists said the coming peak, known as solar maximum or "solar max," could be 30 to 50 percent stronger than the last one, based on a computer model that looked at how plasma circulates between the sun's equator and its poles. Since then, additional reports have added to the concern: In 2008, a National Academy of Sciences study said a severe geomagnetic storm could cause $2 trillion in damage and require as much as a decade of recovery time. In comparison, the damage estimate for Hurricane Katrina is a mere $80 billion or so. Amid all the hype about a 2012 Maya apocalypse, there's been increasing talk about the potential for a solar superstorm on the scale of 1859's "Carrington event " which shorted out telegraph wires, sparked fires and set off auroral displays as far south as Cuba. The fear is that the damage would be more severe in this world of GPS navigation, satellite communications and mobile devices. The Telegraph's article quoted Richard Fisher, the head of NASA's Heliospheric Division at the space agency's Washington headquarters, as saying that a superstorm would "cause major problems for the world." "It will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigation, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic," he told the Telegraph.” (Click here for the rest.)
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TOO DUMB FOR THE COMPLICATED STUFF
This story could provoke some sober thought, if we weren’t so feebleminded.
"Humans may be incapable of solving the ultimate mysteries of the universe. So says Martin Rees, cosmologist and president of the Royal Society, in an interview with the Sunday Times - a view that the paper treated as headline news. Rees thinks problems such as the existence of parallel universes, the cause of the big bang, or the nature of our own consciousness are just too difficult for our puny brains to resolve. He points out that the discoverers of relativity and quantum mechanics were able to use mathematical models developed by mathematicians decades earlier, whereas the math does not yet exist which could unify the two." (Click here for the rest)
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Peter Quaife – RIP
A HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE DALEKS
The secret word is Panic
STICKER SHOCK
Show the turtle murdering bastards they’re not going to get away with it. (And all it takes is a stamped, self-addressed envelope.)
Click here to learn how to get one.
FRANK SINATRA’S DOORBELL
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Thursday, June 24, 2010
DINOSAUR COWBOYS 2010
“The cover is by Italian paleo-artist Fabio Pastori, and the interior illustrations are by Marvel and DC comics artist, Jim Calafiore. It's a dinosaur adventure set in the 1800's on the cusp of the industrial revolution. It's unlike anything out there.”
Then I remembered, it was, in fact, uncommonly like the strip called Flesh that appeared in early copies of the Brit comic 2000AD. The Wikipedia entry reads…
“Flesh first appeared as part of 2000AD's opening line up in its first issue in 1977. Written by Pat Mills, the series was set in the age of dinosaurs who were farmed for their meat by cowboys from the future.”
In fact, the cowboys from the future (led by a character called Earl Reagan) killed so many dinosaurs that they caused them to become extinct despite the efforts of a T-Rex called Old On Eye who led the dinosaur resistance. (See the page below lifted from Everything Comes Back To 2000AD.)
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The secret word Jurassic
MEANWHILE BACK IN THE GULF…
Mother Jones magazine has reprinted “a seriously scary comment thread at The Oil Drum, a sounding board for, among others, many petroleum geologists and oil professionals. The comment in question is from a seemingly very knowledgable "Doug R." suggests that stopping the gusher may be impossible.
"All the actions and few tid bits of information all lead to one inescapable conclusion. The well pipes below the sea floor are broken and leaking. Now you have some real data of how BP's actions are evidence of that, as well as some murky statement from "BP officials" confirming the same. "To those of us outside the real inside loop, yet still fairly knowledgeable, the failure of Top Kill was a major confirmation of what many feared. That the system below the sea floor has serious failures of varying magnitude in the complicated chain, and it is breaking down and it will continue to. "What does this mean? "It means they will never cap the gusher after the wellhead. They cannot...the more they try and restrict the oil gushing out the bop?...the more it will transfer to the leaks below. Just like a leaky garden hose with a nozzle on it. When you open up the nozzle?...it doesn't leak so bad, you close the nozzle?...it leaks real bad, same dynamics.” Click here for more
THE SOUND OF THE GOD PARTICLE (And it’s not Eric Clapton)
Our pal Wendy sent over this snippet…
"Scientists have simulated the sounds set to be made by sub-atomic particles such as the Higgs boson when they are produced at the Large Hadron Collider. Their aim is to develop a means for physicists at Cern to "listen to the data" and pick out the Higgs particle if and when they finally detect it. Dr Lily Asquith modelled data from the giant Atlas experiment at the LHC. She worked with sound engineers to convert data expected from collisions at the LHC into sounds. "If the energy is close to you, you will hear a low pitch and if it's further away you hear a higher pitch," the particle physicist told BBC News." (Click here for more and an audio clip)
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
TURTLE-MURDERING BASTARDS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE
“I’m just waiting for the detergent.”
I’ve known for years that I was living in a different world from people like the BP corporate hierarchy, but now it seems that we occupy radically different dimensions of reality. While I watch the death of the Gulf and maybe the oceans of our planet, BP turns the clean-up locations into their own corporate police state, buys judges, and – even as their robot submarines fuck up – tries, with a blank self-pity, to convince us that all is just hunky dory. This is double-think taken to criminal extremes, and I would liken it to the mindset of a gulag guard, but I’d risk sounding like Glenn Beck. I wish I didn’t feel these things the way I do. They hurt. This is from The Wall Street Journal, usually the good-buddy of all things corporate…
“Last weekend, Tony Hayward left for a yacht outing two days after a very public crucifixion on Capitol Hill. So was this a sign that he is a born optimist, convinced things can only get better — or simply an admission that he might as well enjoy himself for a couple of days given he’s likely to lose his job over the oil spill disaster in any case? Retaining an upbeat tone, in an email to staff last Friday, Hayward again pledged to “get [BP] through the immediate crisis as a stronger and safer company.” That was after a week that saw a congressional grilling, credit downgrades to just above junk status, a pledge to pay $20 billion into a cleanup and compensation fund and a freeze in dividend payouts for the rest of 2010. But in Planet BP — a BP online, in-house magazine — a “BP reporter” dispatched to Louisiana managed to paint an even rosier picture of the disaster. “There is no reason to hate BP,” one local seafood entrepreneur is quoted as saying, as the region relies on the oil industry for work. Indeed, the April 20 spill on the Deepwater Horizon is being reinvented in Planet BP as a strike of luck. “Much of the region’s [nonfishing boat] businesses — particularly the hotels — have been prospering because so many people have come here from BP and other oil emergency response teams,” another report says. Indeed, one tourist official in a local town makes it clear that “BP has always been a very great partner of ours here…We have always valued the business that BP sent us.” Fortunately the articles — on which BP declined to comment — don’t go as far as praising that new treat: seasonal shrimps in (crude) oil. It ain’t all whistling-along on Planet BP, though. The reports mention consumers being “afraid all seafood might be contaminated” and the uncertainty over the region’s economic future. To be sure, Hayward and BP are right to reassure their staff — they are not aboard the Titanic just yet. The company’s average production of 2.5 million barrels a day in liquids, would make it third in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries if it were a government. Its sales and other operating revenues stood at $239.3 billion in 2009 — larger that the gross domestic product of Nigeria. And BP only has 80,000 mouths to feed. But if Hayward is looking on the bright side of life, it’s only from afar for now. An army of lawyers and regulators are examining whether he was nailed for other people’s sins — or for his own.”
The secret word is Impossible
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MAYBE BP EXECS ARE ALSO DISEASED
Our pal Elf Hellion sent us the following…
“The most infamous feud in American folklore, the long-running battle between the Hatfields and McCoys, may be partly explained by a rare, inherited disease that can lead to hair-trigger rage and violent outbursts. Dozens of McCoy descendants apparently have the disease, which causes high blood pressure, racing hearts, severe headaches and too much adrenaline and other "fight or flight" stress hormones. No one blames the whole feud on this, but doctors say it could help explain some of the clan's notorious behavior. "This condition can certainly make anybody short-tempered, and if they are prone because of their personality, it can add fuel to the fire," said Dr. Revi Mathew, a Vanderbilt University endocrinologist treating one of the family members. The Hatfields and McCoys have a storied and deadly history dating to Civil War times. Their generations of fighting over land, timber rights and even a pig are the subject of dozens of books, songs and countless jokes. Unfortunately for Appalachia, the feud is one of its greatest sources of fame.” (Click here for more)
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PATRIOTIC INTENT
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UUUM…YEAH… OKAY
Is this the same man who used to come round my house at 4.00AM and make himself fish-finger and salad-cream sandwiches? (Image lifted from Dangerous Minds)
Click here for a Scandinavian cover of a Farren/Kilmister tune
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
IS BP BURNING SEA TURTLES ALIVE?
I can’t pose the question more bluntly than that, or contain my fury if they are – and I have no reason to disbelieve this report…
“A rare and endangered species of sea turtle is being burned alive in BP's controlled burns of the oil swirling around the Gulf of Mexico, and a boat captain tasked with saving them says the company has blocked rescue efforts. Mike Ellis, a boat captain involved in a three-week effort to rescue as many sea turtles from unfolding disaster as possible, says BP effectively shut down the operation by preventing boats from coming out to rescue the turtles. "They ran us out of there and then they shut us down, they would not let us get back in there," Ellis said in an interview with conservation biologist Catherine Craig. Part of BP's efforts to contain the oil spill are controlled burns. Fire-resistant booms are used to corral an area of oil, then the area within the boom is lit on fire, burning off the oil and whatever marine life may have been inside. "Once the turtles get in there they can't get out," Ellis said. Dr. Brian Stacey of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told NPR last week that, although there are five different species of sea turtle in the Gulf of Mexico, the majority of the ones found affected by the oil spill are Kemp's Ridleys, "the rarest of them all." Ellis confirmed that he's mostly been seeing Kemp's Ridleys. Mike Michael at Gather.com reports that Kemp's Ridleys are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Harming or killing one "carries stiff fines and civil penalties ($500-$25,000) assessed for each violation. Criminal penalties include possible prison time and fines from $25,000-$50,000." Michael suggests that, given the size of the fines BP could face as a result of the turtle deaths, the company may be happy to let turtles burn, as it would make it impossible to calculate exactly how many turtles died. He notes that the bodies of dead animals are being kept as evidence to determine how much in fines BP will be liable for. "Is BP destroying evidence to keep their liability down?" he asks. "Is anyone going to stop them?" (Click here for more and a video.)
The secret words are Murdering Bastards
VISIT THE SCI-FI AIRSHOW
“The SCI-FI AIR SHOW's purpose is to preserve and promote the rich and varied history of Sci-Fi/fantasy vehicles. Through display and education we seek to celebrate the classic design and beauty of these ships and the rich imaginations that created them. When the cameras stopped rolling, many of these proud old ships were lost and forgotten. Please join us in working to keep these rare and beautiful birds soaring!”
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THE FROZDICK FAMILY
There was much debate inside the family about how exactly Franz-Joseph Frozdick perceived the world.
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