THE OLD ACID IN THE WATER SUPPLY STRATEGY

It was always a fond and favorite scenario among us anarchists of the psychedelic left. Dump a mind-melting quantity of LSD-25 into the public water supply and, while the squares went tripped-out, terminal insane, we would establish an hallucinogenic youth oligarch and take over the city, the nation, and finally the planet. (Five to one, baby!) The idea would immediately be borrowed by low-budget Hollywood for the 1968 Barry Shear movie Wild In The Streets, but, even by the time that drive-in wonder came out we’d fondly dismissed it as a stoned absurdity. What we didn’t know at the time, however, was that CIA had been working with total seriousness on the same concept since as early as 1953. (And, of course, there was always the popular theory that the entire Summer of Love and San Francisco in 1967 was an MKULTRA mind-control experiment that ran globally and quantum amok.)

“The psychedelic water saga arose at the height of the Cold War in 1953, when the intelligence agency approached Dr Nick Bercel, a Los Angeles psychiatrist working with LSD in a psychotherapeutic context. After querying him on the possible consequences if the Russians were to put LSD in the water supply of a large American city, the spooks demanded Bercel calculate how much LSD would be needed to dose Los Angeles’s water supply with acid. Bercel dissolved some LSD in a glass of chlorinated water, which promptly neutralised the psychedelic, leading him to tell the CIA the idea was not worth pursuing. The spooks were unconvinced, allegedly designing another version of LSD that was not neutralised by chlorine. Yet although the experiment had failed, the idea that LSD could be used to mass-dose the population had been created – and even though scientific opinion was against it, the notion was just too powerful to give up and started to take on a life of its own.” Click here for more.

Click here for Max Frost and the Troopers

The secret word is Psycho

NEPTUNE COMES FULL CIRCLE

Nobody told me, but last night, the planet Neptune was in perfect opposition, a straight line could be drawn from it right through the Sun and Earth. It was also at its closest to Earth, and was bright in the sky around midnight – although not in the well of atmospheric murk that is midsummer Los Angeles. Neptune is also nearing the end of its first orbit since its discovery. It has taken over 160 years for Neptune to orbit the sun just once, and the planet was actually discovered on the last occasion it came this close to Earth, back in 1846. (The opposition happened on August 20 of that year as well, but the planet wasn't discovered until a month later.) But don’t get too excited. Neptune's first full orbit since its discovery won't be completed until 2011.

Click here for Sandy Denny

Dickie Petersen – RIP

PISSING ON BUDDY HOLLY

At regular intervals, as I amble through the hours, I hear Buddy Holly singing “Everyday”, and I feel happy because it conjures memories of long-gone inept delight, and being young and about as innocent as I would ever be. But then I cease to be happy because I realize that the song is coming from the TV. It’s the music to a goddamned Blackberry commercial that’s in heavy rotation. Just to make matters worse there’s a thrash style version of “Everyday” in another commercial, but I have yet to ascertain what it’s selling. To complain about the songs we fell in love to being used as TV commercials is hardly original, but in the case of Buddy Holly, it’s a little different. Buddy Holly is fucking dead. If Bob or Pete or Iggy or Brain Wilson want their songs used to hawk automobiles, lingerie, insurance, or a sea cruise, that’s their decision, and we can judge them accordingly. Buddy Holly has no such choice and no such protection from crass exploitation. But that’s not all. A long time ago, no less than Paul McCartney would claim to be providing that protection. Back in the 20th century, I went to a press conference in London, at which Fab Sir Paul announced he had purchased the entire Holly song catalogue, and although he freely admitted he would make a whole lotta change off the deal, he also pledged to protect the material from corporate exploitation such as it’s use in commercials. Seemingly this is no longer so. In this brave new world, such promises are naïve and easily forgotten. A shame really, because now I’m going to have to spend my old age pissing on McCartney’s grave.

Click here for Buddy

SORRY

From Valerie

ELVIS AND THE ALIENS

“But, mama, the saucer people always bring me back.”

Yesterday we had Elvis singing the word “motherfucker.” Today we have tales of Vernon Presley seeing UFOs attending Elvis’ birth. Oh man. Where do we go from here?

“Elvis Presley reportedly had a lifelong belief in extraterrestrials and witnessed a number of UFOs during his life. The 'King of Rock and Roll' is said to have had several sightings of UFOs during his life, with his interest sparked by an unusual sighting made by his father, Vernon, on the day he was born, January 8, 1935. The singer's hairstylist and friend, Larry Geller, explained: "His father told us he'd gone out to have a cigarette at 2am during the delivery and when he looked up into the skies above their little shack, he saw the strangest blue light. He knew right then and there that something special was happening." Renowned Elvis historian Cory Cooper, who's been researching the life and times of the rock 'n' roll icon for nearly 30 years, also verified the legend of the blue UFOs in Tupelo that night. He said he's personally heard that same story told multiple times by Geller and other insiders who were close to Elvis. Author Michael C. Luckman - who wrote a book, 'Alien Rock: The Rock 'N' Roll Extraterrestrial Connection', about musicians who have had contact with otherworldly beings - believes Elvis was later visited by aliens when he was a child.” (Click here for more)

And by way of a bonus our pals at Dangerous Minds have come up with a video montage to go with yesterday’s audio of “Stranger In My Own Hometown.” Click here.

The secret word is Royal

BP JUST LIES AND LIES

Goddamn BP are even buying TV time and running sanctimonious commercials that attempt to claim the worse of oil has gone and all is going to be well. It’s not, and they would seem to be lying in their teeth. But what does anyone expect? For close to a century much of the world has been run either by – or for the benefit of – the bloody oil barons, and, right now, despite all that’s happened, little is being done to change that.

“Scientists have mapped a 22-mile plume of oil droplets from BP's rogue well in the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, providing the strongest evidence yet of the fate of the crude that spewed into the sea for months. The report offers the most authoritative challenge to date to White House assertions that most of the 5m barrels of oil that spewed into the Gulf is gone. "These results indicate that efforts to book-keep where the oil went must now include this plume," said Christopher Reddy one of the members of the team from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. The report, which is published in the journal Science, also said the plume was very slow to break down by natural forces, increasing the likelihood that oil could have travelled long distances in the Gulf before it was degraded. "Many people speculated that subsurface oil droplets were being easily degraded," said Richard Camilli, the lead author of the paper. "Well we didn't find that. We found it was still there." (Click here for the rest of the story)

Click here for Nat King Cole

THIS CAN BECOME HYPNOTIC

Or maybe drive you crazy. Click here.

SPACE OPERA (4.20)

And what, we wonder, is taking place in the background?

THIS IS TED NUGENT. HE’S AN ASSHOLE

Many years ago, I drove with Wayne Kramer from Detroit to St. Louis because Wayne was getting paid to do a guest spot on a Ted Nugent show. After meeting the man, I decided he was an asshole. Over the years, my only inclination to modify that first impression was down to Nugent proving himself an even bigger asshole than I had first imagined – in fact, an loud, obnoxious, reactionary, Bambi-killing asshole.

“Some of the biggest hunting rights advocates have had their brushes with the law when it comes to illegal wildlife killing. This week, law enforcement nabbed a big buck within the hunting rights field: Rocker Ted Nugent pled no contest in a California court to poaching activities -- baiting a deer and not having a properly signed hunting tag. If Nugent were just some rank-and-file loudmouth, the court proceedings wouldn't have stirred much attention. But Nugent is not only a long-serving board member of the NRA (15 years), he's a self-styled voice for hunters across America. We've always thought he's an embarrassment to the hunting lobby, providing an unceasing bilge of callous and crude beliefs and behaving in ways that are directly at odds with the self-portrait offered by hunters. Nugent says one thing and does another. He says that sport hunters are great conservationists, and then he goes on to defend the most unsporting, reckless, and irresponsible forms of hunting, such as canned hunts, bear baiting, or pigeon shoots.” Click here for more

Click here for Harry Callaghan

The secret word is Bully

X-RATED ELVIS

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

(FUCK ME) RAY BRADBURY

In a few days, Ray Bradbury will celebrate his 90th birthday. So do yourself a favor, click here for a most surprising tribute to the venerable godfather of science fiction. Beyond that I will not comment.

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

The project was terminated after Sam Frozdick and his partner Norman were beaten to death by their own malfunctioning robot.

THERE ARE DAYS WHEN LIFE CAN APPEAR NEEDLESSLY COMPLICATED

NEUROSCIENTISTS REEXAMINE PSYCHEDELICS

The way that the medical profession avoided the therapeutic use of psychedelics because of what’s referred to below as “negative connotations” has always boggled my mind. Now they seem to be taking a second look at the matter, my only has to be “what took you so long?”

“LONDON - Mind-altering drugs like LSD, ketamine or magic mushrooms could be combined with psychotherapy to treat people suffering from depression, compulsive disorders or chronic pain, Swiss scientists suggested on Wednesday. Research into the effects of psychedelics, used in the past in psychiatry, has been restricted in recent decades because of the negative connotations of drugs, but the scientists said more studies into their clinical potential were now justified. Research into the effects of psychedelics, used in the past in psychiatry, has been restricted in recent decades because of the negative connotations of drugs, but the scientists said more studies into their clinical potential were now justified. The researchers said recent brain imaging studies show that psychedelics such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), ketamine and psilocybin -- the psychoactive component in recreational drugs known as magic mushrooms -- act on the brain in ways that could help reduce symptoms of various psychiatric disorders. The drugs could be used as a kind of catalyst, the scientists said, helping patients to alter their perception of problems or pain levels and then work with behavioral therapists or psychotherapists to tackle them in new ways. "Psychedelics can give patients a new perspective -- particularly when things like suppressed memories come up -- and then they can work with that experience," said Franz Vollenweider of the Neuropsychopharmacology and brain imaging unit at Zurich's University Hospital of Psychiatry, who published a paper on the issue in Nature Neuroscience journal.” (Click here for more)

Click here for the Small Faces

SPEEDING UP THE BEATLES

Discussion has broken out on the interwebs about how early Beatles recordings may have been deliberately speeded up to increase impact and teen appeal. Again it would seem to be a case – at the very least – of “what took you so long?” These tracks have been around for almost half a century and I’ve never heard the idea mooted before. I’m not about to dig out a whole bunch of ancient discs and check for myself and I leave it to your own judgment. I would note, however, that, years ago, Chuck Berry made a similar claim that his early hits were speeded up on the orders of Leonard Chess to make them more teen-friendly, although I wouldn’t totally trust anything ol’ Chuck has had to say.

Click here for the slow down

CAT AND BOX

Here at Doc40 we are huge fans of Simon’s cat, and were thus delighted when Valerie sent us one we hadn’t seen before. Click here for feline fun.

DON'T YOU MISS THE 20TH CENTURY?

IT’S AUGUST, LET’S TALK SHARK

According to Scientific American, sharks are not, in fact, the big, dumb, nasty, Quint-eating sons-of-bitches we generally imagine them to be. Although it’s still unlikely that even a Great White is smart enough to follow Ellen Brody all the way from Amity to the Bahamas like the one in Jaws: The Revenge. (On the other hand, we though Michael Caine might have been smart enough to stay away from such a godawful movie.)

"Sharks have remained relatively unchanged by evolution for 400 million years, but shark science has evolved significantly in just the past few decades. In 1987 when Discovery Channel's now-famous Shark Week series debuted, researchers had few means of studying the animals beyond underwater cages and crude acoustic tracking devices. Twenty-three years later, marine biologists studying elasmobranch (the subclass of cartilaginous fishes that include sharks, skates and rays) animals employ satellite tracking, genetic analysis and high-definition cameras to broaden their knowledge of shark biology and behavior. This research is revealing, among other things, that even sharks like the great white are intelligent, curious animals with cognitive abilities worth studying. "Many sharks have good learning capacity, which is one way we measure intelligence," says Samuel Gruber, a marine biologist at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS), who discovered in 1975 that lemon sharks could learn a classical conditioning task 80 times faster than a cat or rabbit. "I was shocked to find that they could learn so rapidly," he says. Gruber's National Science Foundation–supported Bimini Biological Field Station in the Bahamas, known as Sharklab, is now planning to start a doctoral research program on shark cognition.” Click here for more.

Click here for Jets

The secret word is Food

COMICS FROM THE PROPAGANDA MILL

The other day I happened across a website called Comics With Problems that is a amazingly rich collection of various kinds of propaganda that has been disseminated down the years using a comic book format. Although the material ranged from “tea party” racism to child abuse, I focused in on disinformation from the War On Drugs since that seems to be an ongoing preoccupation round here. Although this stuff reads like something out of the Bizarro world, let’s not forget that the “facts” trumpeted therein have been the pretexts for throwing countless millions of otherwise harmless folk into very real-world prisons.

And for more on speed (succumbing to the temptation of a cheap, self-serving plug) you could pick up a copy of my book Speed-Speed-Speedfreak.

Click here for Motorhead

BUT, IN THE NICK OF TIME, HERE’S SUPERMAN!

Animator Max Fleischer is recognized primarily as the creator of Betty Boop but, in the early 1940s, he produced a series of animated Superman episodes that are a wonder to behold. (Click here for more)

Click here to behold

GRATUITOUS DEBI MAZAR

AFTER ALL THESE YEARS ELVIS IS STILL DEAD

Today is the Elvis Death Day. We don’t actually celebrate it here at Doc40. It’s more the domain of depressed ladies who make pilgrimages to Memphis in the sweating dog-days of August and like to play the Presley version of that morbid Timi Yuro dirge “Hurt.” We celebrate Elvis’ birthday in January and like our man young and feisty.

Click here for young and feisty
And here
And here

The secret word is Gone

Abbey Lincoln – RIP

URBAN BEES FLOURISH

Here at Doc40 we’ve tracked the fortunes of bees for a number of years. Usually word from the bee world is not good, but the wonderful Valerie has sent us something more than a little positive.

“Tourists are not the only ones swarming down the Champs-Elysees and through the Luxembourg gardens this summer. Thanks to a renewed interest in apiaries, Paris is fast becoming the urban bee-keeping capital of the world. The city now boasts some 400 hives and the number is growing steadily. Some are on the balconies of family apartments, others in public parks or on the roofs of famous buildings. Cultivation of a private honey store is now de rigueur for some of the top hotels and restaurants. The famous Tour d'Argent restaurant opposite Notre Dame Cathedral has just installed hives on its roof-top, as has The Westin hotel on the Rue de Rivoli. Driving the trend is growing public awareness of the crisis in rural bee-keeping caused by the collapse in bee numbers. Oddly, city bees are not just immune to the health problems facing their country cousins - they are also far more productive.” Click here for more

Click here for the Four Tops

BUT IT’S COMING…

Our good pal Jimmy sent over this thought provoking report…

“Artificial meat grown in vats may be needed if the 9 billion people expected to be alive in 2050 are to be adequately fed without destroying the earth, some of the world's leading scientists report today. But a major academic assessment of future global food supplies, led by John Beddington, the UK government chief scientist, suggests that even with new technologies such as genetic modification and nanotechnology, hundreds of millions of people may still go hungry owing to a combination of climate change, water shortages and increasing food consumption. In a set of 21 papers published by the Royal Society, the scientists from many disciplines and countries say that little more land is available for food production, but add that the challenge of increasing global food supplies by as much as 70% in the next 40 years is not insurmountable.” Click here for more

Click here for the Dead

DON'T YOU MISS THE 20TH CENTURY?

Click here for The Ramones

SUNDAY BREAKFAST

This morning murmur really has no logic to it, except as a nebulous wash of fond memory regarding how much I adore the traditional American dinner. (And I mean traditional – probably run by a bad-tempered Greek as parodied by John Belushi in the immortal SNL cheeseburger/no-Coke-Pepsi sketches – and not some Johnny Rockets retro-faux Edward Hopper, tourist joint with implausible chrome, pictures of James Dean, and overpriced burgers.) I haven’t spent as much of my life in diners as I have in bars, but it’s damned close. (Especially here in LA where some diners actually serve liquor.) My life has been filled with regular memories and hazy recall of shaking hands and hung over mornings, in some comforting if queasy haven, with cops in the next booth who are probably laughing at my condition, looking for relief before going home to write, barely able to raise a glass of life-saving spigot Coke to my numb lips while – on too many daylight occasions – the perversely sensual companion of the night before now cursed and groaned, hated me and the angular, cynically all-knowing, chain-smoking waitress for existing to invade in her personal hell of destroyed makeup and ruined nightlife finery, in which she resembled nothing less than Death and the Maiden attempting to negotiate an over-ambitious omelet and black coffee. Or there were pre-dawn pit-stops during drunken rampage to fuel up on grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches before returning to the lurid after-hours almost-morning as in Dave’s Diner on Canal Street that was the de facto annex to the Mud Club of the 1980s. Like I said, this blip has no point, except as fond memory and also an indication of the complete process by which lyrics like those that follow were created.

The city air was wafer brittle. Too jagged for the scarcely sane
Avoiding interloper’s glances, aware that we’d come back again
The ancient crew now reassembled, hallowed sweat in gaudy light
The odds on mayhem swiftly shortening
In the course of such a lurid night
Sweet Anita tactile armored, Baby Joseph hides a gun
Never seen the fix so angry. Spurred us to the contract run
Through all the waterholes of destiny. Drinks all round, now see us right
Commerce long since ceased to signify
In the course of such a lurid night

Marcia springs a roll of hundreds, all the hustlers’ eyes are pinned
Ike just racks ‘em, “don’t say nothing.” Marcia grins and Marcia wins
Queens caressing abject sailors, plan to steal a black and white
Civil law might be suspended
In the course of such a lurid night
Like Johnny told us “ain’t no future”. Each rotten hour as it comes
Mutinous troopers of the evening, distinguished by their rattling drums
On to conquest, on to glory; Martian, Treen or Selenite
Whatever planet you might come from
In the course of such a lurid night

Seals are ruptured, trumpets sounding, the Beast should show up anytime
Hold my horse, postpone apocalypse
This rapture’s getting too divine
I could be drunk, I could be falling, poisoned by a malachite
I could even wrestle scorpions
In the course of such a lurid night
A day of reckoning doubtless waiting, if indeed day ever dawns
Then observe the wretched penitent, speared by dilemma’s horns
Hell to pay, if Hell can catch me and I ain’t going without a fight
I could scale Gehenna’s ramparts
In the course of such a lurid night

Click here for Christopher Walken performing Delilah. (You’ll see why.)

The secret word is Yesterday

AND WHILE WE'RE TAKING ABOUT JAMES DEAN AND BACON

MARILYN SEZ...

“I’ll have the eggs – heavy on the Benedict.”

KITTEN MEWS WITH FORKED TONGUE

This tiny Russian kitten is named Luntik, and although the mutant kitty’s four-eared image has gone somewhat viral, no one appears to have noticed that it also has a fairly Satanic fork to its tongue. You have been warned.

Click here for Elvis

BP IS KILLING THE WILD MUSTANGS

While all eyes are still on the Gulf, BP is killing the wild mustangs in Nevada. Our pal Elf Hellion writes – “I'm contemplating dropping an anchor baby in Sweden after watching this report by 14-time Emmy winning investigative journalist George Knapp and Above Top Secret. Clandestinely, British Petroleum is systematically killing the wild horses of Nevada (which is illegal) with the help of the Bureau of Land Management. Yes, THAT BP, although the Ruby Pipeline project folks will tell you its owned by Arco (which is BP). Please take a minute and watch this clip, and please distribute far and wide.” Click here and watch in disgust.

Click here for Dead Weather

The secret word is Scum

SPACE OPERA (Dinner Special)

From out of the rising sun comes something the world probably didn’t know it couldn’t do without. Yes, neighbors, it’s light saber chopsticks.

Click here for a video that takes itself far too seriously

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S # 82

Click here for Nanci Griffith

POE KNOWS

Click here for Christopher Walken
Click here for Vincent Price

WHY WE SHOULD FEAR THE RUSSIAN HEAT WAVE

It’s Friday the thirteenth so let’s get right to the bad news…

“Average temperatures during the month of July were eight degrees Celsius above normal in Moscow, he said, noting that "such a huge increase in temperature over an entire month is just unheard of." On Monday, Moscow reached 37 C when the normal temperature for August is 21 C. It was the 28th day in a row that temperatures exceeded 30 C. Soil moisture has fallen to levels seen only once in 500 years, says Brown. Wheat and other grain yields are expected to decline by 40 percent or more in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine - regions that provide 25 percent of the world's wheat exports. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced a few days ago that Russia would ban all grain exports. Food prices will rise but how much is not known at this point, says Brown. "What we do know, however, is that the prices of wheat, corn, and soybeans are actually somewhat higher in early August 2010 than they were in early August 2007, when the record-breaking 2007-08 run-up in grain prices began." Emissions of greenhouse gases like CO2 from burning fossil fuels trap more of the sun's energy. Climate experts expected the number and intensity of heat waves and droughts to increase as a result. In 2009, heat and fire killed hundreds in Australia during the worst drought in more than century, which devastated the country's agriculture sector. In 2003, a European heat wave killed 53,000 people but as it occurred late in the summer crop, yields were not badly affected. If a heat wave like Russia's were centred around the grain- producing regions near Chicago or Beijing, the impacts could be many times worse because each of these regions produce five times the amount of grain as Russia does, says Brown. Such an event could result in the loss of 100 to 200 million tonnes of grain with unimaginable affects on the world's food supply. "Russia's heat wave is a wake-up call to the world regarding the vulnerability of the global food supply." Click here for the whole story.

Click here for Martha (yes, it’s ironic)
Click here for The Who (equally ironic)

The secret word is Famine

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Amelie Frozdick considered her iron ensemble tres chic, and even the hammer was preferable to the welding torch.

ELVIS’ HAIR IN AN OLD FRUIT JAR

Right before the Elvis Death Day, our pal Jon sent us this twist of iconography. I’m not sure what I’d do with Elvis’ hair if I had it.

“One of his prize possessions was a bag of hair clippings that he had saved over many years while cutting and stylizing Elvis' hair. He ascertained at this time that this bag of hair clippings were personally saved by him and he verified to me with his solemn oath that this bag of hair clippings were actually Elvis' hair. Prior to Mr. Gill's death, he gave me this bag of hair clippings because of our close friendship and mutual love of Elvis. At this time, these hair clippings given to me from Mr. Gill have been in my sole possession up to this date. I swear and affirm that the above statement is true. I do solemnly swear and attest that the hair clippings are actually from Elvis Aaron Presley and were given to me by Mr. Homer Gilleland and are my sole property."

Click here for Elvis

SPACE OPERA (Metal Style)

I’m not a real Iron Maiden fan but the video for their tune "The Final Frontier" is really a piece of work. Click here.

THE RED QUEEN HYPOTHESIS…

Each night, around midnight, an email appears in my inbox from our good friends at Delancey Place that contains something basic but really interesting. This gem showed up a couple of days ago…

"Approximately two billion years ago a pair of single-celled organisms made a terrible mistake-they had sex. We're still living with the consequences. Sexual reproduction is the preferred method for an overwhelming portion of the planet's species, and yet from the standpoint of evolution it leaves much to be desired. Finding and wooing a prospective mate takes time and energy that could be better spent directly on one's offspring. And having sex is not necessarily the best way for a species to attain Darwinian fitness. If the evolutionary goal of each individual is to get as many genes into the next generation as possible, it would be simpler and easier to just make a clone. The truth is, nobody really knows why people - and other animals, plants and fungi - prefer sex to, say, budding. Stephen C. Stearns, an evolutionary biologist at Yale University, says scientists now actively discuss more than 40 different theories on why sex is so popular. Each has its shortcomings, but the current front-runner seems to be the Red Queen hypothesis. It gets its name from a race in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. Just as Alice has to keep running to stay in the same place, organisms have to keep changing their genetic makeup to stay one step ahead of parasites. Sexual reproduction allows them to shuffle their genetic deck with each generation. That's not to say that sex is forever. When it comes to reproduction, evolution is a two-way street. When resources and mates are scarce, almost all types of animals have been known to revert to reproducing asexually.” – Brendan Borrell, Scientific American

Click here for Billy Idol

The secret word is Congress

AND LYING BABIES

And a couple more days before the above, we got this…

“Researchers have found that the ability to tell fibs at the age of two is a sign of a fast developing brain and means they are more likely to have successful lives. They found that the more plausible the lie, the more quick witted they will be in later years and the better their ability to think on their feet. It also means that they have developed 'executive function' - the ability to invent a convincing lie by keeping the truth at the back of their mind. Parents should not be alarmed if their child tells a fib,' said Dr Kang Lee, director of the Institute of Child Study at Toronto University who carried out the research. 'Almost all children lie. Those who have better cognitive development lie better because they can cover up their tracks. They may make bankers in later life.' Lying involves multiple brain processes, such as integrating sources of information and manipulating the data to their advantage. It is linked to the development of brain regions that allow 'executive functioning' and use higher order thinking and reasoning.” – Richard Alleyne, Telegraph.co.uk 

Click here for Alice Cooper

HARD TIMES

Back in the mid-1990s, the Deviants – the nucleus of which was me, Andy Colquhoun, and Jack Lancaster – recorded a song called “Hard Times”, first as a demo, and then as part of the CD eating Jello With A Heated Fork. As though to prove the song was about a decade and a half premature, our pal Butlincat has posted both versions on YouTube, along with a cover The Who’s “Whiskey Man” by the post-Pink Fairies combo Flying Colors that was Andy, Russell, and Sandy. You’ll notice the first version of “Hard Times” has fuck-words. The second doesn’t. We were trying make it radio friendly. It wasn’t. Click here.

NOW CHRISTIANS HATE EINSTEIN

Not content with going after Darwin, the insane Christians are now directing their pitchforks at Albert Einstein for creating a mathematical base for what they condemn as “moral relativism.”

“Some liberal politicians have extrapolated the theory of relativity to metaphorically justify their own political agendas. For example, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama helped publish an article by liberal law professor Laurence Tribe to apply the relativistic concept of "curvature of space" to promote a broad legal right to abortion. As of June 2008, over 170 law review articles have cited this liberal application of the theory of relativity to legal arguments. Applications of the theory of relativity to change morality have also been common. Moreover, there is an unmistakable effort to censor or ostracize criticism of relativity.” Click here for more nonsense.

DON'T YOU MISS THE 20TH CENTURY?

THE DEATH OF BOOKS

Pronouncements that paper books are dead and should resign themselves to pulping have been made for at least a decade, if not more. The collapse of Barnes & Noble, however, has brought the idea boiling to the surface of the ever-simmering, Chicken-Little doomsday soup, and we have, once again, to face yet another round of doom, gloom, and corporate pessimism that will cause even more pain and tribulation for those of us who care more about the written word and the overall health of the culture than about media delivery systems. I’m certainly not going to miss B&N. For a very long time the national bookstore chain was part of the problem and never a solution, entrenching the concept of the monolith bestseller, encouraging the worst short-sighted excesses of major publishers, constraining diversity and experimentation, and generally making life difficult-going-on-impossible for mid-list authors and the owners of boutique bookstores who actually cared about the tomes they were selling. B&N wanted nothing more than a world of books reduced to the next Sarah Palin (or, worse still, Sarah Silverman), Left Behind, and Harry Potter, plus a lot of cookbooks and Christian parenting manuals. I will not mourn them, but I also can’t raise a great deal of excitement about electronic reading machines, be they Kindle or iPad or other. They can only mean the critical mass of literature will be wholly controlled by Amazon, Apple, Sony, some other dire global entity-to-come, and that manipulation and censorship will be rule of the game rather than an unpleasant possibility.
As a fantasist, I have a dislike of futurists, and am loath to make predictions, but even a cursory examination of the recent past should give enough hints. The book, and especially the novel, will mutate rather than die. Paper books will continue, much in the way that vinyl continues. Some kinds of paper volumes will be re-crafted as faux-luxury items while others will be demanded by folks who simply want to read that way. A lot of people will read e-books, a lot won’t, and by far the majority won’t anything read at all. What scares me in the short term is that writers, like musicians, will become expendable. The corporate salary person frequently cannot tell the good from the bad from the ugly, and runs like a mutt from the risky and the unconventional. At a time when authors should be crafting whole new conventions and creatively investigating how reading patterns are being changed by the internet and the inroads of contemporary tech, they will be left to twist in the wind, with publishers shucking off their traditional role of the bankers of writing. It was stupidity – not technology – that destroyed the magazine industry.
Like I said just now, I’m loath to make predictions, because, even when on the right track, I know they are never the complete picture. Thus, above all, I expect the unexpected and know I must be ready to run with it. Right now I am working on the fifth Renquist novel in a way that may well cause agents and editors – already clinging desperately to celeb non-books – to shake their heads in confirmation that I am as insane as they always suspected. But I continue, because, in the end, that’s both the strength and the downfall of all creative work. Whatever happens, you just gotta do it.

Click here to fill in some background with a more conventional view of the situation.

The secret word is Onward

THE FROZDICK FAMILY

Ramses Frozdick could levitate turtles.

WHY ARE SO MANY COPS GOING CRAZY?

Our pal Aeswiren sent us this very frightening map from the ultra-libertarian Cato Institute that appears to show how law enforcement in general and SWAT units in particular – mainly under the pretext of the War on Drugs – are busting into people’s homes and killing them. (We have no information on feline fatalities.) This is serious in so far as it seems to be a madness that is similar to the “federal ninja” arrogance of the 1990s that was part and parcel of Waco and Ruby Ridge. Only this time the cops involved are local and seem to simply detest civilians and believe the it’s a capital crime to question the actions or authority of an officer. (Click here.)

Click here for The Clash

SPAGHETTI WESTERNS – THE 2.28 MINUTE TOUR

Our pal HCB, “who is going ever further up the Tiber in search of the Spaghetti Western Heart Of Darkness” sent us this thrill-packed compilation. We think he’s writing a book. (And, yes, purists might claim that One Upon A Time In The West is not strictly a spaghetti western, but we love Jack Elam here on Doc40.) Click here.

And click here for some epic Ennio Morricone
Or click here for The Pogues (or do both)

IT’S BEEN A WHILE SINCE WE RAN A PIC OF LIZ