Saturday, June 05, 2010
“THOMAS KINKADE IS A DEADBEAT”
The business practices of Thomas Kinkade – the massively successful painter of Christian-kitsch cottages – are coming under serious scrutiny as one of his companies goes belly up. This comes on top of long buzzing rumors about his connections with World Vision, a supposedly evangelical aid organisation that the paranoid conspiracy community has suspected for decades of being a CIA front operation with ties to brainwashing and the 1978 Jonestown massacre.
“One of Thomas Kinkade's companies filed for bankruptcy protection Wednesday, a day after a $1-million payment was due to former gallery owners who have tried for four years to collect on a judgment they won against the self-styled "painter of light." The Chapter 11 petition was filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Jose in the name of the Kinkade production arm, Pacific Metro of Morgan Hill, Calif. It allows Pacific Metro to reorganize and puts an automatic stay on the collection of all judgments, including one for $3 million owed to Karen Hazlewood and Jeff Spinello. "Kinkade is a … deadbeat," said their lawyer, Norman Yatooma, who accused the artist and his Los Angeles attorney, Dana Levitt, of "breaching their agreement" to pay up. "Kinkade's word is as worthless as his artwork. His lawyer is no better." (Click here for more)
Click here for Joe Brown
The secret word is Saccharine
“BLUE LAGOON”
Click here for another track (plus minimalist video) from the upcoming virtual album String Theory by my longtime songwriting partner and band mate Andy Colquhoun (once and future Deviant and Pink Fairy). The title of the track is “Blue Lagoon.” I don’t know if Andy was thinking of the cocktail or an idyllic beach when he composed the piece, but, naturally, here at Doc40, we used the image of the alcohol. Click here for previous upload.
Friday, June 04, 2010
COKE, IT SEEMS, IS BAD FOR YOU (Or so they say)
It’s Friday and here on Doc40 it’s turned out to be a day of recreational pursuits away for all the ghastly stuff that seems to be our daily news fodder.
"TUESDAY, June 1 (HealthDay News) -- Cocaine abusers -- already at risk for an abnormal heartbeat, hallucinations, convulsions and stroke -- can add another potential health complication to the list: rotting flesh. "If you are a user of cocaine, you should be aware that some of the cocaine is not clean and can have other agents that can cause you to have a low white-cell count or skin tissue death," said Dr. Ghinwa Dumyati, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Rochester and an epidemiologist for the Monroe County Health Department in New York. In a report in the June 1 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, Dumyati and doctors from the University of Rochester Medical Center discuss two cases involving women with a history of cocaine use who came to the hospital for help when they noticed purplish plaques on their cheeks, earlobes, legs, thighs and buttocks. Their profiles were typical of toxicity with levamisole, the doctors reported. The medication is a veterinary anti-worming agent, approved for use in cattle, sheep and pigs. It was once used to treat cancer, autoimmune diseases and kidney problems in humans, Dumyati said. It's no longer approved for use in people in the United States, she said, because of adverse side effects. But it's often used to cut cocaine, before distribution to the user, she said. "Almost 80 percent of the cocaine coming into this country has levamisole mixed in," Dumyati said." (Click here for more)
Click here for Marianne
The secret word is Cut
"TUESDAY, June 1 (HealthDay News) -- Cocaine abusers -- already at risk for an abnormal heartbeat, hallucinations, convulsions and stroke -- can add another potential health complication to the list: rotting flesh. "If you are a user of cocaine, you should be aware that some of the cocaine is not clean and can have other agents that can cause you to have a low white-cell count or skin tissue death," said Dr. Ghinwa Dumyati, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Rochester and an epidemiologist for the Monroe County Health Department in New York. In a report in the June 1 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, Dumyati and doctors from the University of Rochester Medical Center discuss two cases involving women with a history of cocaine use who came to the hospital for help when they noticed purplish plaques on their cheeks, earlobes, legs, thighs and buttocks. Their profiles were typical of toxicity with levamisole, the doctors reported. The medication is a veterinary anti-worming agent, approved for use in cattle, sheep and pigs. It was once used to treat cancer, autoimmune diseases and kidney problems in humans, Dumyati said. It's no longer approved for use in people in the United States, she said, because of adverse side effects. But it's often used to cut cocaine, before distribution to the user, she said. "Almost 80 percent of the cocaine coming into this country has levamisole mixed in," Dumyati said." (Click here for more)
Click here for Marianne
The secret word is Cut
PORN BY THE NUMBERS
Click here for a mass of graphic and explicit facts and figures
Click here for Elvis
And after that what else but…
ORGIES ARE NOT WHAT THEY USED TO BE #3
Click here for Christina Aguilera (Seems like everyone’s got an orgy video, although I notice Kylie’s has been pulled down.)
Thursday, June 03, 2010
THE WAGES OF GREED
I’ve admired Jim Hightower for a long time. He makes a lot of sense.
“Many news reports about the Gulf oil catastrophe refer to it as a "spill." Wrong. A spill is a minor "oops" — one accidentally spills milks, for example, and from childhood, we're taught the old aphorism: "Don't cry over spilt milk." What's in the Gulf isn't milk and it wasn't spilt. The explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon well was the inevitable result of deliberate decisions made by avaricious corporate executives, laissez faire politicians and obsequious regulators. As the ruinous gulf oil blowout spreads onto land, over wildlife, across the ocean floor and into people's lives, it raises a fundamental question for all of us Americans: Who the hell's in charge here? What we're witnessing is not merely a human and environmental horror, but also an appalling deterioration in our nation's governance. Just as we saw in Wall Street's devastating economic disaster and in Massey Energy's murderous explosion inside its Upper Big Branch coal mine, the nastiness in the gulf is baring an ugly truth that We the People must finally face: We are living under de facto corporate rule that has rendered our government impotent. Thirty years of laissez-faire, ideological nonsense (pushed upon us with a vengeance in the past decade) has transformed government into a subsidiary of corporate power. Wall Street, Massey, BP and its partners — all were allowed to become their own "regulators" and officially encouraged to put their short-term profit interests over the public interest. Let's not forget that on April 2, barely two weeks before Deepwater Horizon blew and 11 people perished on the spot, the public's No. 1 official, Barack Obama, trumpeted his support for more deepwater oil drilling, blithely regurgitating Big Oil's big lie: "Oil rigs today generally don't cause spills." He and his advisors had not bothered to check the truth of that — they simply took the industry's word. That's not governing, it's aiding and abetting profiteers, and it's a pathetic performance. But that was only the start of Washington's oily confession that it has surrendered control to corporate arrogance and avarice. With an unprecedented volume of crude gushing from the well and the magnitude of the disaster multiplying geometrically by the day, who was in charge of coping with that? Not the White House, not the interior secretary, not the EPA. As we saw when Wall Street's greed exploded our economy, the polluting scoundrels were left in charge!” (Click here for the rest)
Click here for The Pogues
The secret word is Uncaring
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
ENOUGH GODDAMN IT!
Not content with foisting the asinine theories of Creationism/Intelligent Design on both the rational public and unsuspecting school kids, one bunch of bloody Christians is determinedly insisting the Earth is the center of the universe and everything else revolves around it because the Bible told them so. Doubtless they’ll loudly demand this end-run to the 15th century be included in Texas textbooks. I shudder in disbelief. Check out the following. This country is eating itself.
“To hear tell, geocentrism, the ancient doctrine that the earth is fixed motionless at the center of the universe, died over four centuries ago. At that time Nicolaus Copernicus, a Polish canon who dabbled in astrology, claimed that the sun and not the earth was at the center of the universe. His idea is known as heliocentrism. It took a hundred years for heliocentrism to become the dominant opinion, and it did so with a complete lack of evidence in its favor. Yet the victory of heliocentrism has been less than total. Over the years geocentrism has had its spokesmen. Among scientists who adhered to the centrality of the earth were three generations of Cassinis: a family of astronomers who dominated French astronomy from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries. Astronomers, pastors, and educators in the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church maintained the geocentric truths well into the twentieth century. They, with the reformers such as Luther, saw that the embracing of heliocentrism would weaken not only science, but also the authority of the Bible.” (Click here for more of this crap)
Click here for Sun Ra (always heliocentric.)
The secret word is Arrant
A HIGH-TRASH HISTORY LESSON
Cuban Rebel Girls (also know as Assault Of The Rebel Girls) -- the impenetrable sexploitation saga of a gang of teenage girls out to support Fidel Castro in the overthrow of Batista -- not only rivals any Ed Wood movie as the worst film ever made, but also contains insider footage of the Cuban Revolution. The Wikipedia entry is curt...
“Cuban Rebel Girls is a 1959 film and the last film for Errol Flynn. It co-starred Beverly Aadland, then Flynn’s girlfriend, and was produced and directed by Barry Mahon. Written and narrated by Flynn, who was sympathetic to Fidel Castro at the time, the film is a semi-documentary. It is filmed in black and white with a screen time of 68 minutes. The storyline follows a group of mercenaries helping Castro against Fulgencio Batista.
The films significance lies in that, to save money, Flynn filmed during the actual Cuban revolution and shot some amazing documentary footage. (According to legend, he even encountered Che Guevara in Santa Clara.) Thus Cuban Rebel Girls poses a triple threat with its dire acting and plot, the pathetic spectacle of Errol Flynn coming terminally unglued, and the images of the real world victory over Batista, and for that it should be remembered.
Click here for a clip
“Cuban Rebel Girls is a 1959 film and the last film for Errol Flynn. It co-starred Beverly Aadland, then Flynn’s girlfriend, and was produced and directed by Barry Mahon. Written and narrated by Flynn, who was sympathetic to Fidel Castro at the time, the film is a semi-documentary. It is filmed in black and white with a screen time of 68 minutes. The storyline follows a group of mercenaries helping Castro against Fulgencio Batista.
The films significance lies in that, to save money, Flynn filmed during the actual Cuban revolution and shot some amazing documentary footage. (According to legend, he even encountered Che Guevara in Santa Clara.) Thus Cuban Rebel Girls poses a triple threat with its dire acting and plot, the pathetic spectacle of Errol Flynn coming terminally unglued, and the images of the real world victory over Batista, and for that it should be remembered.
Click here for a clip
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
SATAN ‘SHROOM SLAY
What the hell is going on in Northern California? Bad acid, disgruntled pot growers, and now diabolic mushroom murders…
“CRESCENT CITY -- Witnesses in Del Norte County Superior Court on Wednesday laid out a chaotic series of events surrounding a March killing in Klamath, weaving a twisted picture of a drug-filled night that led to the alleged torture and slaying of a 21-year-old Crescent City man. The accounts of the night are clouded by statements made by the four people in the house at the time of the incident or leading up to it, all of whom are believed to have taken psychedelic mushrooms. The victim and the suspect, according to the testimony, became preoccupied with the idea that a tidal wave was coming, that the end of the world was upon them and that a struggle between God and the devil was taking place. Del Norte County Superior Court Judge William Follett ruled after hours of testimony that there was sufficient evidence to hold Jarrod Wyatt, 26, in the alleged murder of his friend Taylor Powell. Wyatt will also have to answer to charges of aggravated mayhem and torture. The prosecution called two Del Norte County Sheriff's deputies to testify about what they found at the Requa house in which the killing took place in the early morning hours of March 21. The prosecution also called a detective who interviewed Wyatt after his arrest. The defense, in a move to dilute the charges against Wyatt, called his ex-girlfriend, who was at the residence that night and witnessed some of the events before Powell's death.” (Click here for more)
Click here for Robert Johnson
The secret word is Fungicide
Peter Orlovsky – RIP
THERE GOES THE LEG ROOM
I dimly recall when flying was kinda sophisticated, now it’s a cramped hell that is seemingly about to get worse. This is a letter to The Consumerist, and I can only add that Dallas to Orange County is bad enough, but LA to London or Tokyo could become even more of a painful nightmare.
“I’m a road warrior and fly every week from Dallas DFW to Orange County SNA for work. I’ve been doing this trip for about 6 months so I know the drill. Every week I book my ticket for about 3 weeks out to get the best fares and to get the seats that I like. My preference has been to sit in row 14 as that is the second exit row and the seats can recline. This week I went to book my ticket for the week of June 14th and I noticed that on my outbound flight (to SNA) 14 was the 2nd exit row, however on my return flight which is June 17th row 15 is the 2nd exit row. I figured it must be a mistake or something and checked around. It looks like American is adding in 2 rows to the 737 on or about June 15th. Previously there were only 28 rows on a 737 but now there will be 30. As someone who flies on the plane every week, I can tell you, it isn’t very roomy in coach as it is. When they add two more rows it will definitely suck.” (Click here for more)
Click here for the Byrds
DON’T BE A…
Although how much choice we have is becoming increasingly debatable. And while we debate it, let’s ponder the words of BP boss Tony Hayward on the destruction of the Gulf of Mexico. "There's no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back." At $4.5 million a year, I wouldn’t mind his life either.
Click here for Jimmy Reed
Monday, May 31, 2010
HOPPER AND HOLLIDAY
The one time I worked with the late Dennis Hopper was when he cut the voice-over track for the TV documentary based on my book The Black Leather Jacket. I had to fly with the TV sound crew to Glenwood Springs, Colorado because Hopper was shooting the movie Flashback in which he played an Abbie Hoffman-like character who had been hiding from the feds for over twenty years – and also delivered the lame and less than prophetic line, “The 90's are going to make the 60's look like the 50's.” Although it strained the documentary’s budget I was happy to spend a few days in the Colorado Rockies because I knew Doc Holliday was reputedly buried in the Glenwood Springs’ Linwood Cemetery (although no one’s too sure) after dying in the local sanatorium. My objective was to make a pilgrimage to his grave, but, I was regretfully defeated by my unwilling lungs. At close to 6000 feet the air is kinda rarified (and you get drunk real easy) and when I discovered that Linwood Cemetery was three quarters of a mile up an overgrown rocky trail up a serious mountain, I knew I wasn’t going to make it. Returning to the hotel, I encountered Hopper in the lounge. When I recounted my tail of failure and thwarted plans, he laughed. “Hell, Doc made it up there.”
But when I replied that Doc was already dead and must have been carried up the trail, he saw my point.
Click here for The Black Leather Jacket
The secret word is Altitude
Sunday, May 30, 2010
SUNDAY BREAKFAST
Donuts? Yes, donuts. Hardly the breakfast of champions, but how about law enforcement or Homer Simpson? With a coffee, or a coke, or even a glass of milk? Plus a shot of Jack if it’s one of those mornings, and certainly a joint. Maybe it’s inviting a heart attack but it really does help when you're trying figure out how the nephilim will react when they return to Earth and see what’s happened to the ten thousand year-old genetic experiment, and how Victor Renquist will deal with that reaction.
Click here for Rebel Rouser
The secret word is Dough
KNOW YOUR PSYCHO #1
"This is what psychopaths can't do. ... They are missing the primal emotional cues that the rest of us use as guides when making moral decisions. The psychopath's brain is bored by expressions of terror. The main problem seems to be a broken amygdala, a brain area responsible for propagating aversive emotions such as fear and anxiety. As a result, psychopaths never feel bad when they make other people feel bad. ... Hurting someone else is just another way of getting what he wants, a perfectly reasonable way to satisfy desires. The absence of emotion makes the most basic moral concepts incomprehensible. G. K. Chesterton was right: 'The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.” – Jonah Lehrer: How We Decide
KNOW YOUR PSYCHO #2
“Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom.” – anonymous McCain aide
Click here for P.J. Harvey
Saturday, May 29, 2010
A GOOD MAN DOWN
David DiGiannantonio played the title role in the eighteen-some months of the New York off-off-Broadway run of The Last Words of Dutch Schultz – the rabid r&b musical that Wayne Kramer and I concocted back in the 20th century. Dave died last Friday, back in Italy, of a massive stroke. He was a fine actor, a good friend, a prodigious drinking buddy, and did the best impression of Benito Mussolini I’ve ever seen. He will be sorely missed.
Click here for the studio recording of the overture to the show. Dave does the spoken word parts.
Click here for the studio recording of the overture to the show. Dave does the spoken word parts.
METH MOLUSC
Our good pal UK Steve has sent us this crucial item about how you tell a speedfreak snail from a regular snail.
“In a development whose importance it would be difficult to exaggerate, scientists have produced research answering one of the great questions facing humanity in the 21st century: what happens if you get snails hopped up on crystal meth and poke them with sticks? The drug-pushing scientists in question are Barbara Sorg of Washington State Uni and Ken Lukowiak of the University of Calgary. The mollusc they chose for their experiments was the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis. The two snail savants placed their slimy drug-slaves into pond water which they had spiked with methamphetamine, described as "a highly addictive drug that seduces victims by increasing self-esteem and sexual pleasure, and inducing euphoria". Having got their slippery subjects well addled on this delightful but damaging chemical treat, Sorg and Lukowiak then tested their memories by means of varying the amount of oxygen in the pondwater and poking them with sticks.” (Click here for more)
Click here for The Who
The secret word is Escargot
METH MOUSE
Then Mickey scored the Peppo
(And this is, of course, a shameless plug for my book Speed-Speed-Speedfreak that will be out at the end of June.)
Dennis Hopper – RIP
Friday, May 28, 2010
MOJO GOES BACK TO WORK (But not without a blacklist)
The industrial action by the freelance writers and photographers at Mojo magazine against new and onerous contracts offered by the owners, Bauer Media, has failed. (For the full details of the story flip back to Monday April 12th ). Management are not retreating any further from the wholly unacceptable terms of the contract and the negotiating committee led by Phil Sutcliffe have reluctantly given up.
Writer Johnny Sharp succinctly sums up the satiation… "Even if the battle is ultimately lost, in an age when unions are routinely discredited everywhere we have at least shown Bauer and the rest of the media that we can collectively bargain and withdraw our labour if we feel strongly about something. That alone has been worth fighting for.”
Dave Marsh also points out that, even though victory was not achieved, the good fight was fought, and could be emulated by a lot of creative people who are currently being royally fucked by media bosses both in Europe and USA. (I hope Dave doesn’t mind me quoting him.) “I can tell you from long experience that what has happened with music writers in the UK is all but unthinkable amongst any kind of writers over on this side of the pond. I don't know that that is something to be proud of, given how generally worthless we've become, but it is at least an indication that you have a lot more left to lose than you think. And that means, also, that you have a much better chance of gain than many will believe.”
Many of those who refused to sign the Bauer contracts are now effectively blacklisted and I personally will never work for any Bauer publication again. And I hope you won’t read any of them. The irony in all this is the more content providers are screwed, the worse the content becomes, the worse the content becomes the more the sales drop, and the magazine ultimately fails. But that’s modern capitalism for you. The corporate contempt for workers is almost equalled by their contempt for consumers.
Click here for Billy Bragg
The secret word is United
Writer Johnny Sharp succinctly sums up the satiation… "Even if the battle is ultimately lost, in an age when unions are routinely discredited everywhere we have at least shown Bauer and the rest of the media that we can collectively bargain and withdraw our labour if we feel strongly about something. That alone has been worth fighting for.”
Dave Marsh also points out that, even though victory was not achieved, the good fight was fought, and could be emulated by a lot of creative people who are currently being royally fucked by media bosses both in Europe and USA. (I hope Dave doesn’t mind me quoting him.) “I can tell you from long experience that what has happened with music writers in the UK is all but unthinkable amongst any kind of writers over on this side of the pond. I don't know that that is something to be proud of, given how generally worthless we've become, but it is at least an indication that you have a lot more left to lose than you think. And that means, also, that you have a much better chance of gain than many will believe.”
Many of those who refused to sign the Bauer contracts are now effectively blacklisted and I personally will never work for any Bauer publication again. And I hope you won’t read any of them. The irony in all this is the more content providers are screwed, the worse the content becomes, the worse the content becomes the more the sales drop, and the magazine ultimately fails. But that’s modern capitalism for you. The corporate contempt for workers is almost equalled by their contempt for consumers.
Click here for Billy Bragg
The secret word is United
CANADA ROLLS OUT THE SOUND CANNONS
Munz sent us this warning. Modern protesters could wind up as deaf as Pete Townshend.
"Riotous protesters marching at the G20 summit next month may be greeted with ear-splitting “sound cannons,” the latest Toronto police tool for quelling unruly crowds. Toronto police have purchased four, long-range acoustic devices (LRAD) — often referred to as sound guns or sound cannons — for the upcoming June 26-27 summit, the Star has learned. Purchased this month, the LRADs will become a permanent fixture in Toronto law enforcement, said police spokesperson Const. Wendy Drummond. “They were purchased as part of the G20 budget process,” Drummond said. “It’s definitely going to be beneficial for us, not only in the G20 but in any future large gatherings.” Drummond stressed the devices will primarily be used by police as a “communication tool.” The devices double as loudspeakers and can blast booming, directional messages or emergency notifications in 50 different languages; Drummond said Toronto police have used one of the devices already while executing a search warrant this month. But critics say they are really non-lethal weapons and infringe upon protester rights." Click here for more
Click here for Hawkwind (but I couldn’t find a live clip of Sonic Attack)
SPACE OPERA (Devotional Special)
This image was supplied by our very good friend Valerie who has been sending images and stories to Doc40 every since we had the tech to run images. Right now Valerie has some serious health problems and all our thoughts and good wishes go out to her.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
IT’S NOT EASY BEING PINK
As regular readers will know I have a long and checkered relationship with the combo know as the Pink Fairies, as a consigliere, co-conspirator, performer, drinking buddy, and song writer. It was never easy. And no, this is not a picture of a mutant Larry Wallis, it’s an Australian handfish…
“Found off the coast of Tasmania and Australia, the rare handfish are solitary, slow-moving creatures. They use their fins to walk on the seafloor, rather than swimming. This is how our ancestors might have looked, before emerging from the sea. National Geographic has a series of articles on these fish, which are spotted so infrequently that it's been hard for scientists to study them. There are only 14 species of handfish, and they lay very few eggs. Most are endangered. They eat by wandering very slowly across the seafloor, eating worms and crustaceans. Though they make an easy target for predators, they manage to escape being eaten because they have extremely toxic skin.”
Click here for When’s The Fun Begin (and yeah, I co-wrote this)
The secret word is Blossom
BUT TAKING ABOUT PINK FAIRIES…
My longtime friend and writing partner Andy Colquhoun has a new instrumental track titled “Back In The Day” up on YouTube. Click here.
Andy tells us 'Back in the Day' is the first track from his on-line instrumental virtual album String Theory. (In mp3, 128kbps format.) “The idea is to release a track each week. This one is a 2:38 edit of a 5:47 minute song. The full version will be downloadable too, when I get my website going, which could be soon. Meanwhile, watch this space on you-tube for the next track, next week.”
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
THE ALAOTRA GREBE IS EXTINCT AND I’M NOT FEELING TOO WELL MYSELF
As I make my way to the computer to try to write what I hope to hell is the best and most ingenious, maybe the most igneous, and ceratinly the most complex piece of fiction I have ever attempted, and which, at my age, I have at least to consider might be my last novel, I see the sorry Louisiana pelicans on TV defiled with oil and I know that most of the poor creatures will die. I read the story below about how yet another species of birds has become extinct and are gone from the planet. I see the corporate machinations that turn apocalypse into a profit/loss cost effectiveness study. I see the distorted and distorting face of that idiot grifter Sarah Palin, who all too recently danced through the nation chanting “drill baby drill.” (Is there such a thing as the fatuousness of evil?) Fugue moments of fury and despair overtake me. How far from its end is my tether. I take time off from Doc40 to cope. But I’m back. Read the following and weep, and then turn with a snarl and continue to fight no matter how hopeless.
“One more step in what scientists are increasingly referring to as the Sixth Great Extinction is announced today: the disappearance of yet another bird species. The vanishing of the Alaotra grebe of Madagascar is formally notified this morning by the global conservation partnership BirdLife International – and it marks a small but ominous step in the biological process which seems likely to dominate the 21st century. Researchers now recognise five earlier cataclysmic events in the earth's prehistory when most species on the planet died out, the last being the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event of 65 million years ago, which may have been caused by a giant metorite striking the earth, and which saw the disappearance of the dinosaurs. But the rate at which species are now disappearing makes many biologists consider we are living in a sixth major extinction comparable in scale to the others – except that this one has been caused by humans. In essence, we are driving plants and animals over the abyss faster than new species can evolve.” (Click here for more)
Click here for The Band
The secret word is Godawful
“One more step in what scientists are increasingly referring to as the Sixth Great Extinction is announced today: the disappearance of yet another bird species. The vanishing of the Alaotra grebe of Madagascar is formally notified this morning by the global conservation partnership BirdLife International – and it marks a small but ominous step in the biological process which seems likely to dominate the 21st century. Researchers now recognise five earlier cataclysmic events in the earth's prehistory when most species on the planet died out, the last being the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event of 65 million years ago, which may have been caused by a giant metorite striking the earth, and which saw the disappearance of the dinosaurs. But the rate at which species are now disappearing makes many biologists consider we are living in a sixth major extinction comparable in scale to the others – except that this one has been caused by humans. In essence, we are driving plants and animals over the abyss faster than new species can evolve.” (Click here for more)
Click here for The Band
The secret word is Godawful
MASS PRODUCED SANCTUARY FROM THE MASS PRODUCED NIGHTMARE
After a half century, the bloody shelters and the cowering bunker cult are back. Not this time for nuclear fallout but for terrorism, 2010, and more nebulous apocalypse. Our pal Faux Smoke sends this story of the extent to which the unbridled venality of one section of the population will prey on the fearful stupidity of another. Cowboy up you timorous wannabe troglodytes. The planet can still be saved. Maybe.
"I would hate to give all this up and live in a bunker," said Kramer, glancing at sailboats out on the Pacific with his feet roosted on a glass coffee table. "I'm not trying to perpetuate doom and gloom, but you have to be prepared." Legions of Americans dug backyard fallout shelters to ride out atomic Armageddon during the Cold War. Now, with heightened concerns about terrorist attacks in the post- 9/11 world, a new generation is looking underground. "In some ways, our political climate is similar," said Jeffrey Knopf, associate professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. "There's a lot of free-floating anxiety out there about the dangers that terrorists will get nuclear weapons … and it multiplies." Cue the entrepreneurs. Come-ons for doomsday products, from survival classes to earthquake kits, abound on the Internet. Demand is fueled by natural disasters, terrorist activity and websites dedicated to exploring such topics as what will happen Dec. 21, 2012, the last day of the ancient Maya calendar and the date that, some people believe, the world will end. Larry Hall is recruiting rich clients for what he calls an underground survival condo — in Kansas. He envisions a building that goes 15 floors beneath the ground, with units selling for $1.75 million. "After the earthquakes and volcanic explosions, they're calling up, saying everything they said was going to start happening is happening," said Hall, an engineer who lives in Florida. "It's making people nervous." Michael Wagner is peddling a personal "survival pod" for people to take refuge from tidal waves. The Oregon man says he's been getting a lot more nibbles since the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. (Click here for more)
Click here (as ever) for Bob
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