via: CORPUS MMOTHRA

Sadhu Soccer

I love this photo. But where is Team Naga for the "shirts vs. skins" challenge?

posted by Mmothra at 6/30/2006 11:42:00 AM links to this post

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Monday, June 26, 2006

"Holy Smokes"

Misleading and semi-condescending text but a pretty terrific photo...

"Holy smokes: A sadhu, or Hindu holy man, enjoys a pipe as his monkey heads upstairs for fresher air on the banks of the River Ganges in Allahabad, India."

posted by Mmothra at 6/26/2006 12:29:00 PM links to this post

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Looks to me like the monkey's coming DOWN the pole. -Ib

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Shut Me Up

Mindless Self Indulgence

Lend A Hand

Brain Repairs Itself

Impact Lab: "Brain Taught to Repair Itself After a Stroke"

Scientists have discovered a new way to make the brain repair itself after a stroke, it emerged yesterday, raising hopes that people left paralysed by the debilitating condition could have their mobility restored in the future.


More about 'Brain Taught to Repair Itself After a Stroke'
Posted by archimedes on Tuesday, June 27 @ impact lab

Bad is Now Good

What was Bad is Now Good (and Vice-Versa)
30-Jun-2006





OK, hold on to your hats: the American Medical Association says that drinking coffee is good, eating eggs is good but eating margarine, which they once touted as a way to prevent heart attacks, is BAD.
Full Story

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via: unknown country

Buttocks in Art

Buttocks in the History of Art

I've spent a lot of time in those gigantic art museums in Europe. After 10 miles of walking and staring at thousands of art works, there is still ten thousand pieces to see and 20 miles of corridors to go. Usually at that stage my head gets so torpid that I just walk like a zombie and time to time I stop in front of some paintings or sculptures. I once, probably in Louvre, begun to think over what is the sign which makes me to stop. Then I realised it and I asked myself what am I really interested in art?

;-)

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I've grown weary of political asses. -Ib...........via: aberrant news

Give Them Shelter

Give Them Shelter, Give Them Homes

The Weekly Standard: Homelessness Needs To Be An Issue Again

(Page 1 of 2)

June 29, 2006

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Quote "For years we've been patting ourselves on the back and saying we've been serving the same homeless person. It's time to start looking for permanent solutions." Philip Mangano, director of the federal Interagency Council on the Homeless

(Weekly Standard) This column was written by William Tucker.

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Whatever happened to the homeless? "We haven't heard much — anything, really — about the homeless since, oh, roughly January 20, 1993," Andrew Ferguson noted in January 2001, predicting that with Bush replacing Clinton, the media would soon rediscover them. As if on cue, days later the Washington Post ran a 2,000-word opus on the plight of the homeless in the nation's capital.

But does the reverse hold? If the Bush administration makes progress on homelessness, does it make news? The answer, all too predictably, is no.

At a remarkably underreported conference in Denver in May, advocates for the homeless met to discuss a pattern of falling homeless populations across the country. In the past six months, New York has announced a reduction of 13 percent, Denver 11 percent, Portland 20 percent, Miami 30 percent, Philadelphia 50 percent. The story merited squibs in the Denver Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Rocky Mountain News. The New York Times ran a page 19 story almost a month later. Beyond that, silence.

"All this comes from President Bush," says Philip Mangano, who worked with the homeless for 25 years in Boston before becoming director of the federal Interagency Council on the Homeless. "The president promised in his 2002 State of the Union that we were going to find a cure for homelessness. It's the 'no-child-left-behind' mentality. He doesn't like to see people left behind." Such declarations have been made time and again over the past 25 years without much effect. The difference this time is that Mangano and the Interagency Council seem to have found a successful formula — "Housing First."

Much of the program is admittedly a rah-rah, get-everybody-on-board effort that enlists mayors, governors, church leaders, shelter organizations, social service agencies, civic groups, business leaders, and everyone else to the task. Pep rallies are held; Malcolm Gladwell lectures on the "Tipping Point"; Harvard's Clayton Christensen talks about the "Innovator's Dilemma" and the "Innovator's Solution."

"We're trying to upset the status quo," says Mangano

Seven Dipshits

Seven Dipshits In A Warehouse

The latest terror cell to wage "ground war" on America

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | June 27 2006

Just when you thought the predictability of the latest triumph in the war on terror couldn't get any more ludicrous - you're reminded that the Neo-Cons like to keep the propaganda simple and straightforward, never deviating from well-honed tactics.

In Friday's article on the Sears Tower arrests I predicted that, "One of the repeating elements to emerge from every major terror sting or forged terror alert is the use of retarded individuals as patsies, informants and go-betweens."

"Don't be surprised to learn of a connection to a retarded individual over the next few days."

So it follows that yesterday it emerged from a New York Daily News report that the alleged ringleader of the plot Batiste "needs psychiatric help," according to his own mother.

The Daily Show's John Stewart classified the Miami terror cell that were about to "wage a ground war against America," according to Gonzales as "seven dipshits in a warehouse," following a farcical press conference in which Gonzeles was cornered into admitting that they had no links to any Al-Qaeda members and had no weapons or explosives to carry out any acts of terrorism.

Today, lawyers for the defendants outlined an argument that the government had used entrapment to essentially imagine into existence a deadly Al-Qaeda terror cell that had never existed in the first place.

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via: propaganda matrix

Life and Existence

AUMbySophie Cauvin

Introduction

This ancient mysterious question, the topic of eminent philosophical debates, religions and secret ritual initiations, could perhaps be answered, at least in part, by looking to the contributions of Evolutionism and modern Psychology. Evolutionism describes, as objectively as possible, the processes, tendencies and laws of the developing universe. Psychology describes the deepest needs and aspirations of man, and how they can be durably fulfilled.

During the 20th century both these sources of fundamental knowledge, objective and subjective, were dramatically elaborated, and appeared to yield the same conclusions. As is argued elsewhere (Integration), the fact to use several complementary sources of knowledge adds evidence to the plausibility of this description of the Sense of Life and Existence.

The Sense of Life and Existence

Existence is the progressive development and integration of ever more complex and conscious structures from strings and quarks up to a socialized planet (and universe). Human life is the opportunity for a conscious participation into this universal integrative evolution.

The most central process in this universal and psychological realizations is the phenomenon of integration. This process, that occurs spontaneously in all forms of evolutionary progress, and that also can be consciously performed by intelligence, consists in a constructive combination of dynamic elements, factual or conceptual, often hidden in a non-integrative and even confluctuous shape.

Most of religious, philosophical and even political theories can be interpreted as an intuitive approach to this formulation. But the lack of universal applicability of most of these theories often allowed distorted and sometimes dangerous conclusions, as illustrated by every kind of indifferent, or even aggressive and destructive behaviour perpetrated with the endorsement of moral, religious and/or political authorities.

The fundamental Law of Existence

We could put one more step inwards, and try to define to most fundamental Law of Existence. Although Integration is a very important process, it is perhaps only the concrete way by which a deeper law is applied. To integrate is a way to participate into the existence of other systems, things and people, but what is this drive which pushes us towards active participation?

Liberty

Re-grow Teeth

Smile! A new Canadian tool can re-grow teeth say inventors

Snaggle-toothed hockey players and sugar lovers may soon rejoice as Canadian scientists said they have created the first device able to re-grow teeth and bones.

The researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton filed patents earlier this month in the United States for the tool based on low-intensity pulsed ultrasound technology after testing it on a dozen dental patients in Canada.

"Right now, we plan to use it to fix fractured or diseased teeth, as well as asymmetric jawbones, but it may also help hockey players or children who had their tooth knocked out," Jie Chen, an engineering professor and nano-circuit design expert, told AFP.

Chen helped create the tiny ultrasound machine that gently massages gums and stimulates tooth growth from the root once inserted into a person's mouth, mounted on braces or a removable plastic crown.

The wireless device, smaller than a pea, must be activated for 20 minutes each day for four months to stimulate growth, he said.

It can also stimulate jawbone growth to fix a person's crooked smile and may eventually allow people to grow taller by stimulating bone growth, Chen said.

Desolation Row

They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row

Cinderella, she seems so easy
"It takes one to know one," she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning
"You Belong to Me I Believe"
And someone says," You're in the wrong place, my friend
You better leave"
And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row

Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortunetelling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing
He's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row

Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid

To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession's her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah's great rainbow
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
Now you would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They're trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser
She's in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
"Have Mercy on His Soul"
They all play on penny whistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row

Across the street they've nailed the curtains
They're getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
A perfect image of a priest
They're spoonfeeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words

And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls
"Get Outa Here If You Don't Know
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row"

Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row

Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody's shouting
"Which Side Are You On?"
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row

Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the door knob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row

String Theory Tangle

Has string theory tied up better ideas in physics?

By SHARON BEGLEY The Wall Street Journal

2006-06-23

(AP) - Nobel physicist Wolfgang Pauli didn't suffer fools gladly. Fond of calling colleagues' work "wrong" or "completely wrong," he saved his worst epithet for work so sloppy and speculative it is "not even wrong."

That's how mathematician Peter Woit of Columbia University describes string theory. In his book, "Not Even Wrong," published in the U.K. this month and due in the U.S. in September, he calls the theory "a disaster for physics."

A year or two ago, that would have been a fringe opinion, motivated by sour grapes over not sitting at physics' equivalent of the cool kids' table. But now, after two decades in which string theory has been the doyenne of best-seller lists and the dominant paradigm in particle physics, Mr. Woit has company.

"When it comes to extending our knowledge of the laws of nature, we have made no real headway" in 30 years, writes physicist Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada, in his book, "The Trouble with Physics," also due in September. "It's called hitting the wall."

He blames string theory for this "crisis in particle physics," the branch of physics that tries to explain the most fundamental forces and building blocks of the world.

String theory, which took off in 1984, posits that elementary particles such as electrons are not points, as standard physics had it. They are, instead, vibrations of one-dimensional strings 1/100 billion billionth the size of an atomic nucleus. Different vibrations supposedly produce all the subatomic particles from quarks to gluons. Oh, and strings exist in a space of 10, or maybe 11, dimensions. No one knows exactly what or where the extra dimensions are, but assuming their existence makes the math work.

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also:

Part 3- Paranormal Physics 101 By Russell White PHYSICS...come on say it with me…PHYSICS...see it’s not so bad. Granted the equations and formulas that go along with physics are somewhat daunting unless of course your name is Poindexter. Most of us, however, don’t wear plaid shirts and striped pants. Most of us can’t walk through a foot deep puddle of water without getting the bottom of said pants wet. Most of us don’t have an endless supply of pens, pencils, laser pointers and erasers in our breast pocket either. But neither can we decipher this: (Equation for electromagnetic waves.)

Illustration of String Theory

Physics has a place in the research of the paranormal. In fact, I have said before that I feel it is through this discipline of science that the paranormal will finally be proven to exist. Physics is the study of matter, energy and their interactions. Physics is also known as the study of nature’s FUNDAMENTAL forces. This discipline of science is unique in that it uses these big hairy formulas and equations, which are aspects of mathematical law, to prove that which is intangible, those things that can’t be physically seen, touched or heard at times. Mention physics to most people on the streets and the majority of them will immediately freeze up and shut down at the very least or run away screaming into the distance at the very worst.

Aside from all these horrible looking numbers and letters seemingly scattered at random on a piece of paper, physics give us many plausible possibilities and in some cases actually supports the theories of paranormal researchers.

The God Effect

The Strange World of Quantum Entanglement

Could entanglement prove to be the “Holy Grail” for merging scientific and mystical, religious thought?

Brian Clegg received a physics degree from Cambridge University and is the author of numerous books and articles on the history of science. His most recent book is The God Effect : Quantum Entanglement, Science's Strangest Phenomenon.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What you write in your book about entanglement is so startling, it’s hard to believe. Let’s start with a definition. What is quantum entanglement?

Entanglement is a strange feature of quantum physics, the science of the very small. It’s possible to link together two quantum particles – photons of light or atoms, for example – in a special way that makes them effectively two parts of the same entity. You can then separate them as far as you like, and a change in one is instantly reflected in the other. This odd, faster than light link, is a fundamental aspect of quantum science – Erwin Schrödinger, who came up with the name “entanglement” called it “the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics.” Entanglement is fascinating in its own right, but what makes it really special are dramatic practical applications that have become apparent in the last few years.

Is it possible that entangled particles are not actually in immediate communication, but are simply programmed in to behave the same way? Much like twins separated at birth who live eerily similar lives - assume the same professions, marry similar spouses, etc.

This is an obvious possibility. John Bell, who devised a lot of the theory for testing the existence of entanglement, covered it in a paper called “Bertlmann’s Socks and the Nature of Reality.” Reinhold Bertlmann, a colleague of
Bell

’s, always wore socks of different colors. Bell pointed out that, if you saw one of Bertlmann’s feet coming around the corner of a building and it had a pink sock on, you would instantly know the other sock wasn’t pink, even though you had never seen it. The color difference was programmed in when Bertlmann put his socks on.

But the quantum world is very different. If you take some property of a particle, the equivalent of color, say the spin of an electron, it doesn’t have the value pre-programmed. It has a range of probabilities as to what the answer might be, but until you actually measure it, there is no fixed value. What happens with a pair of entangled electrons is you measure the spin of one. Until that moment, neither of them had a spin with a fixed value. But the instant you take the measurement on one, the other immediately fixes its spin (say to the opposite value). These “quantum socks” were every possible color until you looked at one. Only then did it become pink, and the other instantly took on another color.

You write that Einstein among other scientists could not accept quantum entanglement. It seems to throw out the whole notion of cause and effect. How confident are physicists that quantum entanglement exists and what are the implications for science and the scientific method?

Amazonian 'Stonehenge'?

Did ancient Amazonians build a 'Stonehenge'?

Archeologists think stones possibly a prehistoric observatory

These granite blocks are among the 127 found on an Amazon hilltop.

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- A grouping of granite blocks along a grassy Amazon hilltop may be the vestiges of a centuries-old astronomical observatory -- a find archaeologists say indicates early rain forest inhabitants were more sophisticated than previously believed.

The 127 blocks, some as high as 9 feet, are spaced at regular intervals around the hill, like a crown 100 feet in diameter.

On the shortest day of the year -- December 21 -- the shadow of one of the blocks disappears when the sun is directly above it.

"It is this block's alignment with the winter solstice that leads us to believe the site was once an astronomical observatory," said Mariana Petry Cabral, an archaeologist at the Amapa State Scientific and Technical Research Institute.

"We may be also looking at the remnants of a sophisticated culture."

Anthropologists have long known that local indigenous populations were acute observers of the stars and sun.

But the discovery of a physical structure that appears to incorporate this knowledge suggests pre-Columbian Indians in the Amazon rain forest may have been more sophisticated than previously suspected.

Mysterious Morgellons

The Mystery of Morgellons
26-Jun-2006

People are really suffering

We wrote a story over a year ago about a mysterious disease which is affecting people primarily in California and Florida. Then we found out that this may not be a real disease. It could also be the strange skin disease we reported on two years ago. Now KTVU.com reports that while most physicians are still skeptical about it, one scientist is beginning to take Morgellons seriously.

Sufferers report extreme itching, then fibers ooze out of open lesions on their skin, accompanied by uncontrollable muscle twitching. The symptoms are being reported by over three thousand people, nationwide. In Oklahoma, researcher Randy Wymore has assembled a medical team to get to the bottom of this malady, once and for all. He says that early reports that the extrusions from skin sores were textile fibers are "just not true, to be perfectly blunt about it." He thinks they are evidence that the disease somehow causes these substances to form inside the body and says, "We know there's something going on here. [Patients] are not delusional."

Epstein-Barr, the name of the sydrome that makes patients feel tired and vaguely ill, used to be thought of as a form of hypochondria, but now a virus for Epstein-Barr has recently been discovered.

Here's something else that sufferers know is real: The debilitating headaches known as migraines, which can put them out of commission for hours, or even days. Pain medicines don't work well against them. Migraine sufferers are told to avoid certain foods, like red wine, but that often doesn't help much either. Now there's a machine that can "zap" away the pain.

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via: unknown country

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Also:

The Language Of Morgellons -
Think Beyond The Box

Morgellons - The Disease Doctors
Refuse To Treat

'Horrifying' Morgellons Ends Career Top
Baseball Pitcher

Morgellons Has Spread Worldwide

Diary Of A Morgellons Parasite Disease Sufferer

'Fiber Disease' Bizarre Truth Begins To Emerge

Cause and Defect

Notice something wrong? Are our clocks ticking backward? The known laws of physics say there's no reason why the past, present and future must occur in that order. Backward works, too.

By Scott LaFee
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

June 22, 2006

CRISTINA MARTINEZ BYVIK / Union-Tribune

Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?

The answer would seem to be yes, if only because time always moves forward, drawing not just “we few” but everyone and everything “onward to new era.”

But what if time is like the palindrome above? What if the so-called arrow of time flies both ways, forward and back? What then? What now? What next?

People have debated the nature of time since, well, people invented it. Time is, in many ways, a fabrication of our minds, a superficial construct that helps us explain the universe, plot our course through existence and show up when we're supposed to.

“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once,” Albert Einstein once said.

And so it goes, one thing happens, then another – a phenomenon called cause-and-effect. “It's a notion so deeply ingrained that it's hard to think about things any other way,” said Daniel Sheehan, a professor of physics at the University of San Diego.

But Sheehan does, as do other physicists ...

Guidestones

Guidestones into the Age of Reason

Posted by Jason Bellows @ Damn Interesting

In northeast Georgia (USA), just off the Hartwell Highway there is a monument situated on a small rise. It is made of six granite slabs; there is a capstone, one slab stands in the center, and around it four vertical slabs stand just over sixteen feet high. The north/south pair of vertical granite is aligned to the poles. The central hollow of the structure is designed to be lit by light from the sun at noontime no matter the time of year. The entire monument weighs in at an appreciable 118 tons, and is fitted with a small hole that will allow one to stand at the base and observe the North Star. It’s an interesting feat of architecture, but since it was erected in 1980, it’s not fabulous for the era nor is it of surprising craftsmanship (it even bears a misspelling on the explanatory tablet which is set into the ground a few feet away).

The interesting part is the message which is etched into every one of the structure’s faces: a self-professed guide into the age of reason. In our day of political strife, and various religions trying to rule the world, such a guidepost should be welcome. Astonishingly, in our era of polarized views there are factions calling for the demolition and dismantling of the guide stones— though no one wants to personally foot the bill.

Starting from the top, the sentiments of guide stones seem benevolent enough. The capstone reads the following message in Babylonian, Classical Greek, Sanskrit, and Egyptian Hieroglyphics:

• Let these be guide stones to an age of reason.

A good opening in an era that could use a hefty dose of reason. The four corner pieces each bear two languages—one on each face. The English translation reads:

• Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
• Guide reproduction wisely—improving fitness and diversity.
• Unite humanity with a living new language.
• Rule passion—faith—tradition—and all things with tempered reason.
• Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
• Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
• Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
• Balance personal rights with social duties.
• Prize truth—beauty—love—seeking harmony with the infinite.
• Be not a cancer on the earth—Leave room for nature—Leave room for nature.

Read the rest of this entry »

How To Be Happy

The Holographic Universe

The Holographic Universe

'In a holographic universe, even time and space could no longer be viewed as fundamentals. Because concepts such as location break down in a universe in which nothing is truly separate from anything else, time and three-dimensional space, like the images of the fish on the TV monitors, would also have to be viewed as projections of this deeper order.

At its deeper level reality is a sort of superhologram in which the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously. This suggests that given the proper tools it might even be possible to someday reach into the superholographic level of reality and pluck out scenes from the long-forgotten past.'

Read more...

FKCUK

Forbidden Knowledge Conference UK

Come and Bite the Apple!

"Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there."

Rumi

No Cred Veep

Sen. Biden On Cheney: "He's At 20% In The Polls. No One Listens To Him. He Has No Credibility"...

Atrios | June 26, 2006 at 01:35 PM

READ MORE: Dick Cheney, Halliburton

This transcript excerpt is from Sunday's "Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer:"

Biden on Blitzer:

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The worst possible thing we could do is what the Democrats are suggesting, and no matter how you carve it, you can call it anything you want, but basically, it is packing it in, going home, persuading and convincing and validating the theory that the Americans don't have the stomach for this fight.

BLITZER: All right. You want to respond to the vice president, Senator Biden?

BIDEN: No, I don't want to respond to him. He's at 20 percent in the polls. No one listens to him. He has no credibility. It's ridiculous.

Read entire post here.

Stay the Course?

Who ARE You?

The Book
On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

By Alan Watts (zipped - html)

CONTENTS

	PREFACE	9
1	Inside Information	11
2	The Game of Black-and-White	29
3	How To Be a Genuine Fake	53
4	The World Is Your Body	82
5	So What?	100
6	IT	125

PREFACE

THIS BOOK explores an unrecognized but mighty taboo—our tacit conspiracy to ignore who, or what, we really are. Briefly, the thesis is that the prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East—in particular the central and germinal Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism. This hallucination underlies the misuse of technology for the violent subjugation of man's natural environment and, consequently, its eventual destruction.

We are therefore in urgent need of a sense of our own existence which is in accord with the physical facts and which overcomes our feeling of alienation from the universe. For this purpose I have drawn on the insights of Vedanta, stating them, however, in a completely modern and Western style—so that this volume makes no attempt to be a textbook on or introduction to Vedanta in the ordinary sense. It is rather a cross-fertilization of Western science with an Eastern intuition.

Particular thanks are due to my wife, Mary Jane, for her careful editorial work and her comments on the manuscript. Gratitude is also due to the Bollingen Foundation for its support of a project which included the writing of this book.

Sausalito, California	ALAN WATTS
January, 1966

CHAPTER ONE

INSIDE INFORMATION

JUST WHAT should a young man or woman know in order to be "in the know"? Is there, in other words, some inside information, some special taboo, some real lowdown on life and existence that most parents and teachers either don't know or won't tell?

In Japan it was once customary to give young people about to be married a "pillow book." This was a small volume of wood-block prints, often colored, showing all the details of sexual intercourse. It wasn't just that, as the Chinese say, "one picture is worth ten thousand words." It was also that it spared parents the embarrassment of explaining these intimate matters face-to-face. But today in the West you can get such information at any newsstand. Sex is no longer a serious taboo. Teenagers sometimes know more about it than adults.

But if sex is no longer the big taboo, what is? For there is always something taboo, something repressed, unadmitted, or just glimpsed quickly out of the corner of one's eye because a direct look is too unsettling. Taboos lie within taboos, like the skins of an onion. What, then, would be The Book which fathers might slip to their sons and mothers to their daughters, without ever admitting it openly?

In some circles there is a strong taboo on religion, even in circles where people go to church or read the Bible. Here, religion is one's own private business. It is bad form or uncool to talk or argue about it, and very bad indeed to make a big show of piety. Yet when you get in on the inside of almost any standard-brand religion, you wonder what on earth the hush was about. Surely The Book I have in mind wouldn't be the Bible, "the Good Book"—that fascinating anthology of ancient wisdom, history, and fable which has for so long been treated as a Sacred Cow that it might well be locked up for a century or two so that men could hear it again with clean ears. There are indeed secrets in the Bible, and some very subversive ones, but they are all so muffled up in complications, in archaic symbols and ways of thinking, that Christianity has become incredibly difficult to explain to a modern person. That is, unless you are content to water it down to being good and trying to imitate Jesus, but no one ever explains just how to do that. To do it you must have a particular power from God known as "grace," but all that we really know about grace is that some get it, and some don't.

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via: grey lodge

Hieroglyphics of Driftwork

The Architectonality of Psychogeographicism
or
The Hieroglyphics of Driftwork

by Hakim Bey

(in memoriam Guy Debord)

obscure & mysterious grottoes into which they enter, imitating serpents -- spaces of return to an intimacy that "once upon a time" was shattered by memory -- by the simultaneous reiteration & belatedness of memory -- that faculty of human consciousness "closet to the divine". But don't they say that "to forgive is human, to forget is divine" ? In the ritual reiteration or "remembrance" (dhikr) of the sufis one forgets the "self" precisely in order to recall the Self; -- thus to re-member is to erase separation, & this erasure is a species of forgetfulness. (In certain key Islamic buildings like the Alhambra the reiteration of dhikr as calligrammatic text becomes the very definition of built space as mnemonic device or "Memory Palace" -- not ornament but the very basis or crystal-precipitation-principle of architecture.)
"Since we are Jesus Christ," as one of the Brethren of the free Spirit boasted, "the only issue is that what is already perfect in us should be reiterated ..." This process however leads to a paradoxical un-learning -- hence to a loss of fear -- so that one can "let oneself be led by one's natural senses, like a little child". Now, the cave stands for unconsciousness; -- the goal however is not to lose unconsciousness but to recapture that which unconsciousness separated us from, that which consciousness "spoiled". Thus within the dark grotto itself memory must be paradoxically inscribed -- key images are reiterated (literally repeated in some cases by a palimpsestic or incisive over-drawing) -- images which represent out lost intimacy as a pantheon of animals ("good to think with") -- each animal a special joy or "divine" function. Thus the the cave becomes the first intentional architectural space, the intersection of unconsciousness (the bliss of "Nature") & consciousness (memory , reiteration).

Ever since Plato we've been taught to revere anamnesis -- but let's descend to the pre-Platonic cave, the paleolithic grotto, to recover the positive dialectic of amnesia -- without which memory becomes simply a curse, coagulating at last as History (the degree of zero of memory as suffocation): the first city (Çatalk Hüyük) is already arranged as a gridwork, the very antithesis of the grotto's aesthetic shapelessness, it's meandering & amazing spaces, it's melted stalagmites & stalactites -- its organicity (which is never the less expressed as mineral life). The cities of Sumer & Harappa were likewise laid out as severe grids, cruel abstractions of linearity. To draw a line is to separate, to create spatial hierarchy (between priest & people, rich & poor, surplus & scarcity) and to define the topia of memory against the dark unconscious of the tribe, the u-topian cave, the organic wild(er)ness. The tertium quid or coincidentia oppositorium here (between "grotto" & Babylon) might appear in the medieval city (which still survives in a few places in the Islamic world) where the excessive cruelty of the grid is mollified -- not erased but softened -- by a recording of a space according to the tree or the river-delta model (chaotic bifurcation ranging to complexity based on intra-dimensional "strange attractors") -- an urbanism of the organic, the aesthetic, & the complex or plural (as opposed to the inorganic, the ideological, & the simple or total).

The medieval city is an extruded grotto Some of these cities introduced allegorical pageants or parades in which huge emblem-complexes (composite hieroglyphs) were built & set up or carried around the labyrinth of streets. Myths & legends were acted out: -- sometimes the Lord Mayor played the role of "Lord Mayor", wandering thru a street-theater of encounters with symbolic characters (like Bloom in Nighttown), thus re-newing the City as its elected Hero undergoing the initiation of ritual marriage with the urban goddess.

Here the Free City comes to a synchronic & ludic consciousness of itself hic et nunc, rather than succumb to the miserabilist diachronism of power's violence. In this Hermetic City we find the background or womb-space of the alchemical Emblem Books, and the narrativity of a Bosch or Breughel. Memory loses its heaviness here & takes on a folkloric air, carnivalesque (the festival as reiteration of pleasure) with built shapes that appropriate (thru design or thru the accidents of decay & accretion) the forms of breasts, phalluses, wombs, rocks & water, moss & flowers, even of wind & light.

The Babylonian grid-city wants memory to persist thru time -- smooth & empty time -- but as Dali showed, memory persists only in the deliquescense of measured time. The medieval-hermetic city (like Blake's Green Jerusalem) preserves memory but in a "disordered" way -- like akashic marmalade -- time which is textured & full. "Babylon" preserves order (or else!) -- but what happens to memory there ? Isn't it transmuted into the poison formaldehyde of History, the re-iterated tale of our poverty & their power, taxonomic myth of the ruling class ? Who can blame us for harboring both a nostalgia & an insurrectionary desire for the narrow winding alleys, shadowy steps, covered ways & tunnels, middens & cellars of a city which has designed itself -- organically, unconsciously -- within an aesthetic of festive & secret conviviality, & of the curvaciuos negentropic mutability of memory itself ?

Death of the Art Dynamic

dave hickey with sari carel

Sari Carel : Often you discuss in your essays and writings a principle shift that occurred in American culture and economy as well as in the Art World starting in the early '70s. You describe this change as having considerable influence on the course of Contemporary Art since then. What are the origins and consequences of this paradigm shift?
Dave Hickey: The art world tends to be driven by its market, and throughout the '50s and the '60s it was a relatively small art world with dealers and collectors and one or two small museums. It was during that period that the most powerful and permanent American art in this century was made—from Abstract Expressionism and Pop, to Minimalism and Post-Minimalism. It was, in a real sense, a great Mediterranean moment created by 4000 heavily medicated human beings. And then in the late '60s we had a little reformation privileging museums over dealers and universities over apprenticeship, a vast shift in the structure of cultural authority. All of a sudden rather than an art world made up of critics and dealers, collectors and artists, you have curators, you have tenured theory professors, a public funding bureaucracy—you have all of these hierarchical authority figures selling a non-hierarchical ideology in a very hierarchical way. This really destroyed the dynamic of the art world in my view, simply because like most conservative reactions to the '60s it was aimed specifically at the destruction of sibling society—the society of contemporaries.

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The problem today, of course, is that art cannot change so fast because it is so highly institutional. The people in the museum are going to be there forever, the people in the university are going to be there even longer. The institutional super structure of the art world, which is always out of date by definition, is really out of date now. I think that you do begin to see small undergrounds, although its hard to stay underground for very long just because if you're any good at all, people really want to look at it, because there is so much boring fucking art. Anybody who sees anything they like, they go crazy. I know artists just coming out of school and they already have a waiting list of 40 paintings, and that's not because they are great artists, it's just that they're not bad artists.

The main thing is Americans don't like art, they won't pay for art, they don't deserve art. That's just a fact. This is a Puritan republic in which nobody gives a shit about art. When I came to the art world, there were maybe 2000 seriously committed people who would do it whether they got payed or not. Today there are about 2000 seriously committed people who would do it whether they get paid or not. That's fine, those 2000 people created Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Pop, and Post-Minimalism in its early days. There have been now for 30 years people working for salaries administering the art world, and what have they done? Art can have public consequences, but it's not very educational. I keep challenging people,

"Tell me one thing that you've learned from art."

Police State America

Mike Adams: 'Bush's domestic spying: How America is rapidly becoming a police state'
Posted on Sunday, June 25 @ 08:43:52 EDT
This article has been read 2140 times.

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Mike Adams, CounterThink

For years I've been warning my readers about the coming police state and the abusive use of power by the Bush administration. This year, we have learned that President Bush -- or should I say King George Bush -- personally authorized domestic spying on American citizens by the National Security Agency (NSA). In articles that have appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post and other national news papers, George Bush admitted that he personally signed off on 30 illegal surveillance wiretaps, and furthermore, he defended the practice, explaining that wiretapping American citizens was saving American lives because of the war on terror. Furthermore, he explained he was doing everything in his power under the laws of the Constitution to protect U.S. citizens and their civil liberties.

The degree of doublespeak being used by George Bush in that statement is extraordinary. His lack of historical context is utterly jaw-dropping. The man is becoming the Stalin of the United States. He is destroying our civil liberties and the Constitution, while simultaneously claiming that he is protecting the Constitution and the civil liberties of the American people. What could be more sinister than using our own intelligence services to spy on the American people? This is more than a little reminiscent of the secret police of Nazi Germany.

The purpose of the Constitution is to put a check on tyranny

A professor of constitutional law at the Georgetown University Law Center, Susan Lo Bloch, said that Bush was "taking a hugely expansive interpretation of the Constitution and the president's power under the Constitution." That's a nice way of saying it. Actually, Bush is making up his own laws and his own power as he goes along. Actually, he is destroying the Constitution because he is making it increasingly irrelevant with each transgression of the limitations of power set forth by the Constitution.

For those who may not know, the purpose of the Constitution was explicitly to limit the power of government over the people. It was created by the founders of the United States out of the very real and genuine fear that any sufficiently centralized system of power, especially a governmental system of power, would eventually become abusive and exploitive, and begin to serve its own purposes rather than those of the people... -continued-

Antony & The Johnsons

Antony & The Johnsons | I am a Bird Now

The new Antony & The Johnsons album, I am a Bird Now, was officially released Tuesday February 1st.

Insound printed this excellent synopsis...

'There is a myth that great artists operate in seclusion. Hogwash. One need look no further than to the ten songs of Antony and the Johnsons' new album, I Am A Bird Now, to realize this is an utter fallacy. To be sure, with his androgynous features, the singularly named Antony is an original. Have you ever heard a voice like this, imbued with the transcendental emotion of the blues, yet deployed with an unadorned simplicity reminiscent of medieval music practice, and graced with a top note of childlike wonder? Or songs that blur distinctions of gender and identity, yet which still summon up such powerful feelings: longing, love, lust, loss? No. Because Antony is one-of-a-kind. But he is certainly not alone. We are proud to present you with a record filled with one of the most gifted voices heard in a long time. Antony's vocals are almost inhuman, coming together to compile a creature that's as beautiful and enigmatic as the Peter Hujar photo, Candy Darling on Her Deathbed, that graces its cover. The lead-off single to I Am A Bird Now, "Fistful of Love" is perhaps Antony & the Johnsons' finest work to date. It features a scorching horn section and subcultural icon Lou Reed on vocals and searing lead guitar. In the tradition of subversive soul classics The Crystals' "He Hit me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)" and Millie Jackson's "Hurts So Good," Antony sings this ode to getting the shit kicked out of you and learning to love every minute of it. The complex emotional undertow of this track reaches a cathartic roar by the song's finale. Antony shifts from a tremble to a wail - a tempest of emotion. I Am A Bird Now also includes contributions from friends Boy George (duet with Antony on "You Are My Sister"), Devendra Banhart (vocals on "Spiralling"), and Rufus Wainright (lead vocals on "What Can I Do").'

Order now from Insound.

Stylus gives it an A- (nobody's perfect)

Buked & Scorned is a believer.

Watch animated videos for The Lake and Mysteries of Love (neither of which are on the new album)

Last Train To Cool, calls him Lou Reed's favorite transvestite.

Slate (MSN) links to two streaming songs and puts Antony in the "Class of 2005," along with M.I.A., Brazilian Girls, and Annie.

Previously

The NY Times reviewed the Antony & The Johnsons show at Joe's Pub

Antony & The Johnsons @ Joe's Pub, NYC | Pics

Antony & The Johnsons

Backstage at Carnegie Hall
Laurie Anderson, Bette Midler, Lou Reed, David Bowie
Antony Hegarty, Jimmy Scott

Lou Reed joins Antony @ Carnegie Hall, NYC | pics

Tibet House Benefit Concert 2005 | Pics

GBOAT : THE GREATEST BAND OF ALL TIME

I Am Very Happy, So Please Hit Me: Antony and the Johnsons

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via: brooklyn veegan

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Fistful of Love slays me.

Ib

Simple Human Decency

notebook

on simple human decency

by ben metcalf

I.

Before I attempt to fill these pages with my disgust, which the odd reader who knows me will surely expect, I am obliged to address a preliminary concern, which that same odd reader may safely ignore. Some time has passed since I last raise my voice to the multitude, and whereas literary taste does not seem to have advanced much in the interim, and I assume is still arrayed so as to engage only the weak-minded and dull, I find that I am no longer able to discern with any accuracy where the bounds of simple human decency lie. This would bother me even less than does the taste issue were it not for the fact that ground gained or lost in the theater of decency tends now and then to affect the law, and it has long been a personal goal of mine to avoid capture and imprisonment.

I am therefore led to wonder what the common citizen is allowed to "say" anymore, in print or otherwise, and still feel reasonably sure that some indignant team of G-men, or else a pair of gung-ho local screws, will not drag him away to a detention center, there to act out, with the detainee as a prop, that familiar scene in which one hero cop or another is patriotically unable to resist certain outbursts against the detainee and what were once imagined to be the detainee's constitutional rights. Because I am loath to violate whatever fresh new mores the people have agreed upon, or have been told they agree upon, and because I do not care to have my ass kicked repeatedly in a holding cell while I beg to see a lawyer, I almost hesitate to ask the following question. I will ask it, though, out of what used to be called simple human decency:

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The Other Side of Truth

It is one thing to show a man that he is in an error,
and another to put him in possession of truth.

- John Locke

Name:Paul Kimball

Location:Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

The Other Side of... Stuart Miller The Other Side of Truth
Interview with Stuart Miller, editor of UFO Review. Miller: "My suspicion is that it’s paranormal. I’ve come to the conclusion over the last year or two years that it’s all roped together, that there is something happening out there – that ghosts, and fairies, and UFOs, are probably, in some way, linked together, and there is an intelligence that chooses to play with us, for whatever reason."

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via: the anomalist

Social Isolation

Social Isolation Growing in U.S., Study Says

The Number of People Who Say They Have No One to Confide In Has Risen

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 23, 2006; A03

Americans are far more socially isolated today than they were two decades ago, and a sharply growing number of people say they have no one in whom they can confide, according to a comprehensive new evaluation of the decline of social ties in the United States.

A quarter of Americans say they have no one with whom they can discuss personal troubles, more than double the number who were similarly isolated in 1985. Overall, the number of people Americans have in their closest circle of confidants has dropped from around three to about two.

The comprehensive new study paints a sobering picture of an increasingly fragmented America, where intimate social ties -- once seen as an integral part of daily life and associated with a host of psychological and civic benefits -- are shrinking or nonexistent. In bad times, far more people appear to suffer alone.

"That image of people on roofs after Katrina resonates with me, because those people did not know someone with a car," said Lynn Smith-Lovin, a Duke University sociologist who helped conduct the study. "There really is less of a safety net of close friends and confidants."

If close social relationships support people in the same way that beams hold up buildings, more and more Americans appear to be dependent on a single beam.

In His Own Write

A. DICK as G.W. BUSH'S SPEECHWRITER

Romancing the Apocalypse

'End Times' Religious Groups Want Apocalypse Soon

'End times' religious groups want apocalypse sooner than later, and they're relying on high tech -- and red heifers -- to hasten its arrival.

By Louis Sahagun, Times Staff Writer
June 22, 2006

Message Man

(Ken Hively / LAT)

click to enlarge

For thousands of years, prophets have predicted the end of the world. Today, various religious groups, using the latest technology, are trying to hasten it.

Their endgame is to speed the promised arrival of a messiah.

For some Christians this means laying the groundwork for Armageddon.

With that goal in mind, mega-church pastors recently met in Inglewood to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft to transport missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission: to make every person on Earth aware of Jesus' message. Doing so, they believe, will bring about the end, perhaps within two decades.

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Though there are myriad interpretations of how it will play out, the basic Christian apocalyptic countdown — as described by the Book of Revelation in the New Testament — is as follows:

Jews return to Israel after 2,000 years, the Holy Temple is rebuilt, billions of people perish during seven years of natural disasters and plagues, the antichrist arises and rules the world, the battle of Armageddon erupts in the vicinity of Israel, Jesus returns to defeat Satan's armies and preside over Judgment Day.

Generations of Christians have hoped for the Second Coming of Jesus, said UCLA historian Eugen Weber, author of the 1999 book "Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults and Millennial Beliefs Through the Ages."

"And it's always been an ultimately bloody hope, a slaughterhouse hope," he added with a sigh. "What we have now in this global age is a vaster and bloodier-than-ever Wagnerian version. But, then, we are a very imaginative race."

Apocalyptic movements are nothing new; even Christopher Columbus hoped to assist in the Great Commission by evangelizing New World inhabitants.

Patriotism: A 2nd Opinion

SEKHMET SPEAKS - Part Five

PATRIOTISM: A SECOND OPINION

Normally Sekhmet pays little attention to politics, regarding it essentially as an exercise in futility ... But one overlooked aspect of the current American political scene has caught her eye. The scenario is familiar to all. The American president (and also Grand Sheriff) George W. Bush has thrown down his philosophical gauntlet, declaring, 'If you ain't with us, you're agin' us'. He and his posse brand all those "agin' "as 'unpatriotic.' Alleged unpatriotism is equated with 'aiding the terrorists', effectively treason. The accused deny the charge, staunchly defending their patriotism; citing dissent as the very essence of patriotism. This confrontation interests, bemuses and yet saddens Sekhmet, for she finds that no one, not one politician, no journalist, no TV commentator, no one anywhere --as far as she is able to determine-- has bothered to look at patriotism itself. So she has taken that look and reports:

Patriotism is not a virtue; it is a pathological condition. Patriotism provides a surrogate soul for nonentities who have never developed souls of their own. (Yes, Virginia, there is a soul, but, like a talent for music or baseball, it must be developed. No development, no music, no baseball, no soul.)

Patriotism is inherently confrontational, divisive and destructive. The familiar bumper sticker reads: GOD BLESS AMERICA. But the hidden, sticky side says: AND FUCK EVERYONE ELSE.

Hitler's storm troopers were patriots; Palestinian suicide bombers are patriots-without-a-country as were the members of the Irgun and Stern gangs in those conveniently forgotten pre-Israel days. Of course, there's a difference between American patriots and their patriots. American patriots are good. God loves American patriots (otherwise why would He have made them so rich?) Their patriots are evil. God hates their patriots.

(part 5 cont.)

Sekhmet Speaks 1

Sekhmet Speaks 2

Sekhmet Speaks 3

Sekhmet Speaks 4

Sorry GOP

GOP Rep. Apologizes To Helen Thomas For SayingThe Virgins Zarqawi Will Meet In“Hell”...“Probably All Look Like Helen Thomas”...

The one and only, absolutely beautiful, Helen Thomas.

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via: huffpo

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GOP sinks to new lows. Who ARE these clowns?
-Ib