Land of the Long White Cloud

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Invisible Invention

Ottawa boy's invisible invention warns birds about deadly windows

CBCNews.ca

Eighth grader Charlie Sobcov wants to stop birds from dying in collisions with windows, but he doesn't want to ruin anybody's view.

For his latest school science fair project he has invented painted, plastic decals that can be placed — discreetly — right in the middle of a window pane.

"This paint is a colour that birds can see but humans can't," he said Wednesday on CBC Radio's All in a Day. "It's like putting a big stop sign in the middle of the window."

The colour is ultraviolet, beyond the range of colours visible to humans. That means the "stop sign" lets birds know the window is solid, but is nearly invisible to humans.

Similar flying falcon-shaped decals already exist on the windows of some buildings, but unlike Sobcov's, they are black and can obstruct part of the window.

Sobcov, who studies at the Turnbull School, a private school in Ottawa, said he first fell in love with birds while on a trip with his parents to Costa Rica four years ago. He learned that bird populations were decreasing around the world, and that many scientists were blaming global warming.

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Down the Drain

Clark Sorensen
San Francisco based Artist, best known for his whimsical Urinal Sculptures
www.clarkmade.com

I am grateful everyday that I live in a country where we can still express our opinions, even if they are critical of our culture or our leaders. This series expresses my take on the lasting legacy of George W. Bush. I feel that so many things are going down the drain as a direct result of the policies made over the last eight years. The urinal seemed like the perfect metaphor. I completely own up to the harshness and irreverence of this show - sometimes it is appropriate to be inappropriate.

By the way, no one was lied to, maimed, killed, overthrown, tortured, falsely imprisoned, or bankrupted in the creating of this art.
-Clark Sorensen

"DOWN THE DRAIN"
-THE LEGACY OF GEORGE W. BUSH-
January 18 - February 16, 2009
Opening reception - Sunday Jan. 18, 4-7 pm
Ruby's Clay Studio
552-A Noe Street, SF, CA

You can also see Clark's work at:

Clark's studio in San Francisco
by appointment only
______________________

Barton Grange Garden Center
This newly opened Garden center in Barton, Preston, Lancashire, UK has installed four of my urinal in their men's bathroom.
Click here to see a video that aired on the BBC about my urinals at this garden centre

People Get Ready

You Never Give Me Your Money

Fascist Capitalism

From about 1903 on, the cabal--an international gang of thugs--began to control national governments through their command of financial and monetary activities and policies. Not many people were discerning enough to see what the cabal was up to, since cabal members posed as ordinary financial experts who would help to make certain that the economy avoided recessions and unemployment. Fortunately, a few thinkers--such as Georgetown University professor Carroll Quigley--saw through their schemes and made their activities public knowledge.

Montagu Norman Hjalmar Schacht with Hitler

"The powers of financial capital had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank, in the hands of men like Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, Benjamin Strong of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Charles Rist of the Bank of France, and Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank, sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world." Caroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 1966

-source

Just a Ride

The world is like a ride in an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly coloured and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question:

"Is this real, or is this just a ride?"

And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say:

"Hey, don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride."

... and we kill those people.

Ha ha, "Shut him up. We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real." It's just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter, because it's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off.

The eyes of love instead see all of us as ONE.

Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defense each year, and instead spend it feeding, clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.

-Bill Hicks

The Mind of the Whale

Life on earth began in the ocean and then moved onto the land. But one precocious line of mammals returned to the sea. How has water shaped the minds, the bodies, the sensory worlds and the societies of whales? Our guide is Jeff Warren. Jeff is an explorer of consciousness in its various forms. In 2007 he published a book called The Head Trip: Adventures on The Wheel of Consciousness. He's spent the past 2 years thinking about whales and dolphins, visiting researchers in their labs and in their boats around North America and the Caribbean to find out what they're learning about mind, culture and society in the ocean.

-Listen (fascinating!), Part 1
OCEAN MIND, Part 2

Cybergeddon

WAR.WIRE

'Cybergeddon' fear stalks US: FBI

NEW YORK, Jan 6 (AFP) Jan 07, 2009

Cyber attacks pose the greatest threat to the United States after nuclear war and weapons of mass destruction -- and they are increasingly hard to prevent, FBI experts said Tuesday.

Shawn Henry, assistant director of the FBI's cyber division, told a conference in New York that computer attacks pose the biggest risk "from a national security perspective, other than a weapon of mass destruction or a bomb in one of our major cities."

"Other than a nuclear device or some other type of destructive weapon, the threat to our infrastructure, the threat to our intelligence, the threat to our computer network is the most critical threat we face," he added.

US experts warn of "cybergeddon," in which an advanced economy -- where almost everything of importance is linked to or controlled by computers -- falls prey to hackers, with catastrophic results.

-spacewar.com

Most Loathsome

THE BEAST
50 MOST LOATHSOME PEOPLE IN AMERICA, 2008

43. You

Charges: You think it’s your patriotic duty to spend money you don’t have on crap you don’t need. You think Hillary lost because of sexism, when it’s actually because she’s just a bad liar. You think Iraq is better off now than before we invaded, and don’t understand why they’re so ungrateful. You think Tim Russert was a great journalist. You’re hopping mad about an auto industry bailout that cost a squirt of piss compared to a Wall Street heist of galactic dimensions, due to a housing crash you somehow have blamed on minorities. It took you six years to figure out what a tool Bush is, but you think Obama will make it all better. You deem it hunky dory that we conduct national policy debates via 8-second clips from “The View.” You think God zapped humans into existence a few thousand years ago, although your appendix and wisdom teeth disagree. You like watching vicious assholes insult each other on TV. You support gun rights, because firing one gives you a chubby. You cuddle falsehoods and resent enlightenment. You think the fact that 43% of whites could stomach voting for an incredibly charismatic and eloquent light-skinned black guy who was raised by white people means racism is over. You think progressive taxation is socialism. 1 in 100 of you are in jail, and you think it should be more. You are shallow, inconsiderate, afraid, brand-conscious, sedentary, and totally self-obsessed. You are American.

Exhibit A: You’re more upset by Miley Cyrus’s glamour shots than the fact that you are a grown adult who is upset about Miley Cyrus.

Sentence: Invaded and occupied by Canada; all military units busy overseas without enough fuel to get back.

...

2. John McCain

Charges: McCain vowed to run a clean, respectful campaign, and then accused Obama of pushing sex ed for kindergartners, calling Palin a pig, hanging with terrorists, being a welfare-loving Marxist, being an arugula-loving elitist and pretty much everything but conspiring with the Borg—but he didn’t really mean it, and he didn’t use Reverend Wright, so we’re all supposed to think he’s swell. McCain lied so blatantly and constantly that even cable news bootlicks were compelled to fact-check him, to which he and his surrogates responded by insisting on the same lies. When pressed on the Nixonian onslaught of falsehood, McCain whined that he wouldn’t have had to be such a mendacious prick if Obama had only refrained from raising so much more money than him. McCain pretended to give a shit about America, and then he picked a vapid ambition-hound to succeed him. His response to the economic crisis might as well have been to punch himself in the face. In every way he could this year, McCain burned up all the credibility he had stored up from decades of shameless worship by the press, utilizing every tactic he ever decried, exuding a heady aroma of bullshit and Alzheimer’s, and displaying an unrequited obsession with Joe the Plumber, and he still wound up a failed Faust even the Devil didn’t want.

Exhibit A: "In the 21st century nations don't invade other nations."

Sentence: Every time anybody says the word “surge,” McCain is shot in the leg.

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Written by Allan Uthman & Ian Murphy
with contributions from John Dolan, Eileen Jones, Alexander Zaitchik, & IOZ.
Illustrations by Ian Murphy.

-link (including previous years)

Einsight

Everything you need to know about the smartest man of the 20th century

From the book:
Einstein: His Life and Universe
by Walter Isaacson

cont @ Time

Accountability

***excellent***

American Stonehenge

Stonehenge Beneath the Waters of Lake Michigan

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In a surprisingly under-reported story from 2007, Mark Holley, a professor of underwater archaeology at Northwestern Michigan College, discovered a series of stones – some of them arranged in a circle and one of which seemed to show carvings of a mastodon – 40-feet beneath the surface waters of Lake Michigan.

If verified, the carvings could be as much as 10,000 years old – coincident with the post-Ice Age presence of both humans and mastodons in the upper midwest.

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Finger Salute

Pirate Perspective

You Are Being Lied to About Pirates

Johann Hari

Columnist, London Independent

Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as "one of the great menace of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell -- and some justice on their side.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the "golden age of piracy" - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda-heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't? In his book Villains of All nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O' Nine Tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century." They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy." This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.

The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: "What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live." In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

more>> (via huffpo)

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also see:

Pirates hijack UN food ship off Somalia

New Year's Resolution

Brainhurter

How the city hurts your brain

...And what you can do about it

By Jonah Lehrer January 2, 2009 -Boston Globe

THE CITY HAS always been an engine of intellectual life, from the 18th-century coffeehouses of London, where citizens gathered to discuss chemistry and radical politics, to the Left Bank bars of modern Paris, where Pablo Picasso held forth on modern art. Without the metropolis, we might not have had the great art of Shakespeare or James Joyce; even Einstein was inspired by commuter trains.

And yet, city life isn't easy. The same London cafes that stimulated Ben Franklin also helped spread cholera; Picasso eventually bought an estate in quiet Provence. While the modern city might be a haven for playwrights, poets, and physicists, it's also a deeply unnatural and overwhelming place.

Now scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. While it's long been recognized that city life is exhausting -- that's why Picasso left Paris -- this new research suggests that cities actually dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so.

"The mind is a limited machine,"says Marc Berman, a psychologist at the University of Michigan and lead author of a new study that measured the cognitive deficits caused by a short urban walk. "And we're beginning to understand the different ways that a city can exceed those limitations."

more>>

America Greets 2009

SUICIDE BY COP

America Greets 2009 By Going Insane

By Ken Layne -Wonkette

A nut in a World War II Nazi military uniform aims his bayonet-tipped rifle at Seattle cops and is shot dead. A distraught guy fires a gun in the air from his garage and three Los Angeles police cut him down. An angry old Colorado ski bum plots an epic four-pronged terror attack on the rich people of Aspen, but he shoots himself in his Jeep Cherokee before detonating the four bombs. Across the country, wrecked Americans chose to go completely insane on New Year’s. Welcome to 2009. It’s going to be awful. MORE »

Universal Life Force

THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE IS ONE LIFE FORCE

Image someone suggesting that the planets are living entities. Then imagine hearing that an intelligent energy force is responsible for species evolving on Earth, every 26 million years.

Even better, imagine that this same force may be pushing us to a new level right now — fulfilling many ancient prophecies of a coming "Golden Age" in the process!

What could be further from the typical media diet of an average human being during his or her daily life?

In this talk, David Wilcock begins explaining how the entire Universe is really One life force.

TAPPING THE COSMIC ENERGY FIELD — FREE ENERGY AND THE MIND

A variety of technologies have been suppressed by Big Oil. They obviously are making a tremendous amount of money from selling oil and gas.

If everyone could have access to unlimited energy — without having to pay for it — that would obviously put a lot of very powerful people out of business.

These technologies are real — though completely ignored by the mainstream media.

For example, beginning in the 1940s, Prof. John Searl (http://www.americanantigravity.com/searleffect.html) designed a magnetic disc that created free energy and anti-gravity effects:

If you want to know more, here’s a one-hour video of a lecture Prof. Searl gave in 1994, where he gives a concise but detailed summary:

Link to Google Video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8635897559220353909

Obviously this is great if it really works… but how does it relate to human evolution? That takes a bit of work to explain, but bear with us.

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excerpted from Divine Cosmos.com

also: 2012: The Bright Side (Free MP3)

New Model Universe

Theory of Expanding Planets

Comic book legend Neal Adams presents his new model for the Universe. His theory proposes that the Earth, and by extension, all moons and planets, expand in size from the inside as they age.

The bottom of the ocean is only between 70 to 180 million years old, said Adams. He hypothesized that Earth was originally ¼ its current size, and that the tectonic plates fit perfectly together on this smaller world which had significantly less areas of water. 600 million years ago Jupiter was also smaller, he said, and thus larger meteors came into the inner solar system, hitting Mars and our moon (as evidenced by their craters). Further, his notion of a growing universe negates the Big Bang theory, and he outlined how a solar system could come into existence as matter is attracted to a sun's electromagnetic field.

Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot

Auld Lang Syne

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind ?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o' lang syne ?

CHORUS:
For auld lang syne, my jo,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp !
And surely I’ll be mine !
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

CHORUS
We twa hae run about the braes,
And pu’d the gowans fine ;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary foot,
Sin auld lang syne.

CHORUS
We twa hae paidl’d i' the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine ;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin auld lang syne.

CHORUS
And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere !
And gie's a hand o’ thine !
And we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught,
For auld lang syne.