The Shift

http://www.shiftingages.com

BLAKE -by T.S. Eliot

Blake

By T.S. Eliot

I

....It is important that the artist should be highly educated in his own art; but his education is one that is hindered rather than helped by the ordinary processes of society which constitute education for the ordinary man. For these processes consist largely in the acquisition of impersonal ideas which obscure what we really are and feel, what we really want, and what really excites our interest. It is of course not the actual information acquired, but the conformity which the accumulation of knowledge is apt to impose, that is harmful. Tennyson is a very fair example of a poet almost wholly encrusted with parasitic opinion, almost wholly merged into his environment. Blake, on the other hand, knew what interested him, and he therefore presents only the essential, only, in fact, what can be presented, and need not be explained. And because he was not distracted, or frightened, or occupied in anything but exact statement, he understood. He was naked, and saw man naked, and from the centre of his own crystal. To him there was no more reason why Swedenborg should be absurd than Locke. He accepted Swedenborg, and eventually rejected him, for reasons of his own. He approached everything with a mind unclouded by current opinions. There was nothing of the superior person about him. This makes him terrifying.

II

But if there was nothing to distract him from sincerity there were, on the other hand, the dangers to which the naked man is exposed. His philosophy, like his visions, like his insight, like his technique, was his own. And accordingly he was inclined to attach more importance to it than an artist should; this is what makes him eccentric, and makes him inclined to formlessness.

But most through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage hearse,

is the naked vision;
Love seeketh only self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite,

is the naked observation; and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is naked philosophy, presented. But Blake's occasional marriages of poetry and philosophy are not so felicitous.

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars.
General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer;
For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized particulars....

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via festivaldepoesiademedellin.org
"There is a party amidst the void"

Evolving in a Dangerous Eden

EVOLVING IN A PLACE CALLED EDEN

IS A PROMISING YOUNG CIVILIZATION. WE GROW MORE DANGEROUS...

Whether you believe in a God or not, it's safe to say you would agree that humanity has learned, however imperfectly, many lessons over the past several millennia, lessons entrusted to progeny through the oral and written history of our ancestors. Let us revisit several of the more painful ones...

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The Tairona's new warning message

The Kogi, says Reichel-Dolmatoff, dedicate their lives to the learning of ‘The Law of the Mother’, the body of esoteric knowledge that contains ‘the myths and traditions, the songs and spells, and all the rules that regulate ritual’. A man ‘should never work for material gain and should not make efforts to acquire more than he needs in order to feed and house his family’ but should dedicate himself to learning so as to ‘contribute to the maintenance of the world order ... and reach old age in a state of wisdom and tolerance.’ But Reichel-Dolmatoff warns against imputing any romantic idea of the ‘noble savage’ - ‘yulúka’, the process by which balance is achieved, does not mean blissful tranquillity but an acceptance and rationalisation of harsh reality. An old máma once said to him: ‘You are asking me what is life; life is food, a woman - then a house, a field - then, god.’ This realistic approach is constantly mentioned as being a respected and desirable attribute in a Kogi.

-from Kogi Cosmology Taironatrust.org

Regarding Politicians & Psychopaths

Oh-oh! Politicians share personality traits with serial killers: Study
-- Andrew Malcolm/LATimesblogs

Using his law enforcement experience and data drawn from the FBI's behavioral analysis unit, Jim Kouri has collected a series of personality traits common to a couple of professions.

Kouri, who's a vice president of the National Assn. of Chiefs of Police, has assembled traits such as superficial charm, an exaggerated sense of self-worth, glibness, lying, lack of remorse and manipulation of others.

These traits, Kouri points out in his analysis, are common to psychopathic serial killers.

But -- and here's the part that may spark some controversy and defensive discussion -- these traits are also common to American politicians. (Maybe you already suspected.)

Yup. Violent homicide aside, our elected officials often show many of the exact same character traits as criminal nut-jobs, who run from police but not for office.

Kouri notes that these criminals are psychologically capable of committing their dirty deeds free of any concern for social, moral or legal consequences and with absolutely no remorse.

"This allows them to do what they want, whenever they want," he wrote. "Ironically, these same traits exist in men and women who are drawn to high-profile and powerful positions in society including political officeholders."

-more

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Slew

The Stud
By Charles P. Pierce

RICKY WILLIAMS, A PREACHER and certified master of Reiki energy healing, is thinking at the greatest horse in the world, and I have interrupted him, and the master is not altogether pleased. Birdsong rides the sweet spring breezes into the barn, where it is drowned out by circular new-age music that rounds back on itself in a kind of inchoate instrumental drone that sounds to admittedly old-age ears like the slow disembowelment of a herd of cellos. There are three crystals on the shelf next to the CD player: two chunks of rose quartz and a smaller, smokier wedge that runs more to deep gray and white. The crystals stay there all the time, and the greatest horse in the world does not attempt to eat them. He stands calmly in his stall on this fine Kentucky morning, and the master thinks at him, at least until some clumsy infidel comes stumbling in and blows the energy flow all to hell and gone. The master gives off a bit of a glare--if Reiki energy worked like laser beams, I'd be nothing more than a shadow on the floor by now--so I leave. And Seattle Slew, the greatest horse in the world, tosses me a look as I go.

He is twenty-seven years old now, old for any kind of horse, let alone the only undefeated horse ever to win the Triple Crown, let alone one that retired with nearly $1.2 million in earnings. You can see the years mainly in his flanks, the deep chestnut lightening with age, and around his mouth, too. He walks stiffly, more in angles than in the deep arcs of rolling muscle within which he once uncoiled. It is his eyes that are young. Bright, with great wide whites to them, the eyes are expressive, soulful even. Seattle Slew doesn't simply look at undifferentiated human beings who pass his stall in the fluid spring. He looks at you. You can feel it.

He's the last of them now, the last living Triple Crown winner, even though his victories in 1977 have been obscured in history by those of Secretariat four years before and by the Affirmed--Alydar duels of a year later. Slew did not demolish the competition the way Secretariat did, and he had no Alydar to push him to the wire. He ran tough and he ran smart, with smooth and dependable acceleration. He looked at them all with that great white eye of his, and he simply would not let another horse beat him.

Click here to read the rest of the article on Esquire.com

Charles Pierce's website

Author of IDIOT AMERICA
How Stupidity Became a Virtue
in the Land of the Free

A New View of the Past

SYMBOLS OF AN ALIEN SKY -Selections (1)

Symbols of an Alien Sky - Comparative Mythology Comes of Age by Dave Smith

October 24, 2009

A review of the just released DVD "Symbols of an Alien Sky".

I've watched the video and I consider the presentation and visual imagery to be a quantum leap up from anything that has been done previously on the Saturn model of prehistory. It cries out for an Imax film presentation to engrave deep into our psyches the most important yet misunderstood message from our ancestors. That message has the potential to awake us from our primitive nightmares and irrational compulsions and allow us to see clearly and for the first time our real situation in this amazing electric universe.

- Wal Thornhill.
Physicist and Electric Universe theorist

Choose Your Religion

-source

A Lucid New Synthesis

From Sacred Mysteries

Robert E. Cox, devoting his life to mastering such abstruse disciplines as the Sanskrit language, the sacred Vedic texts, Pythagorean sacred number and geometry, Alexandrian Hermeticism and laboratory alchemy as well as developing a solid understanding of cutting-edge physics, including string theory, quantum mechanics, and Einstein's theory of relativity, Robert has forged an amalgam of ancient Eastern and Western sacred philosophy with contemporary science, producing

a lucid new synthesis.

Cox's study and rectification of the Vedic cycle of the ages foresees the inevitable establishment of a new Sacred Science, based on the recovery of the science and wisdom of the ancients, amalgamated with the brilliant and most far-reaching insights of contemporary science, which will come to fruition in a not-too-distant Golden Age, an advent that ancient wisdom traditions unanimously indicated will follow the dismantling, now visibly underway, of the structures of materialism, no longer supportable by life on planet earth.

Jay Weidner, author, film-maker and president of Sacred Mysteries Productions comments,

"To learn the ancient wisdom as it applies to the unprecedented circumstances of the present moment from a teacher of Robert Cox's spiritual and intellectual caliber may truly be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and certainly a joyful experience. His absolute lucidity and his articulate teaching are enlivening and profound, but not ponderous and leaden. A genuine maestro, who, through the power and authenticity of his teaching, can move the student forward by a quantum leap.".

A Conversation with Robert Cox

"The Field of Consciousness"

Listen
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Lost Secrets

enlarge

"Cave of Lost Secrets" This ancient half mile high cave still exists (now underwater) from a planet several billions of light years away from Earth. It was built by a (now extinct) intelligent race of beings who also discovered the 3D Mandelbulb we are witnessing on this page. Inside the cave however, lies - amongst other technological and mathematical secrets - the last remaining scroll which contains the much deeper secret of the even more incredible real 3D Mandelbrot formula (giant structures of that were also built at a later stage, but were apparently destroyed for reasons unknown).

-Skytopia

Hell Froze Over

Artificial Triple-Helixed DNA

Artificial Triple-Helixed DNA: Will It Trigger Unintended Consequences?

Cyborgs have been the sci-fi dream of a generation, merging man and machine in amazing new combinations. Most of which seem to look like major action stars. But a team at the University of Copenhagen think that's amateur hour. In fact they find the entirety of life of planet Earth to be distinctly underwhelming, which is why they're working on an upgrade - triple-helixed DNA.

The idea is to add a third Peptide Nucleic Acid (PNA) strand to the two Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) strands we started with. This ultimate artificial additive can regulate the activity of the existing genes, blocking some or enhancing others, and that's just for starters: the cyber-strand is not limited to the four letter vocabulary of GATC, meaning that extra characters could be added tothat very exclusive club.

When a team at the Center for Biomolecular Recognition first attempted to install a PNA strand into the "Major Groove" of regular DNA (yes, this concept is so cool that even the scientific terms involved are funky), they were excited by a surprising and sophisticated effect. Because unintended consequences of far greater complexity than anticipated are exactly what you want to happen in a lab working on life-capable chemicals.

-Daily Galaxy

Global Economic Collapse

Société Générale tells clients how to prepare for potential 'global collapse'

Société Générale has advised clients to be ready for a possible "global economic collapse" over the next two years, mapping a strategy of defensive investments to avoid wealth destruction.

Explosion of debt: Japan's public debt could reach as much as 270pc of GDP in the next two years. A bullet train is pictured speeding past Mount Fuji in Fuji city, west of Tokyo

Photo: Reuters

In a report entitled "Worst-case debt scenario", the bank's asset team said state rescue packages over the last year have merely transferred private liabilities onto sagging sovereign shoulders, creating a fresh set of problems.

Overall debt is still far too high in almost all rich economies as a share of GDP (350pc in the US), whether public or private. It must be reduced by the hard slog of "deleveraging", for years.

"As yet, nobody can say with any certainty whether we have in fact escaped the prospect of a global economic collapse," said the 68-page report, headed by asset chief Daniel Fermon. It is an exploration of the dangers, not a forecast.

-Telegraph

Search for Meaning

Parabola: Tradition, Myth, and the Search for Meaning is a quarterly magazine on the subjects of mythology and religion, from the perspective of transpersonal psychology.^[1] ...

"The parabola represents the epitome of a quest. As stated in our first issue, it is 'a curving line that sails outward and returns with a new expansion—and perhaps a new content, like the flung net of a Japanese fisherman.' It is the metaphorical journey to a particular point, and then back home, along a similar path perhaps, but in a different direction, after which the traveler is essentially, irrevocably changed."

The magazine's subtitle has changed incrementally over the years. In its first years, it was Parabola: Myth and the Quest for Meaning, then Parabola: The Magazine of Myth and Tradition, later Parabola: Myth, Tradition, and the Search for Meaning, and now its current form.

via Answers.com

Fake Gold

Gld ETF Warning, Tungsten Filled Fake Gold Bars

By: Rob_Kirby marketoracle.co.uk

I’ve already reported on irregular physical gold settlements which occurred in London, England back in the first week of October, 2009. Specifically, these settlements involved the intermediation of at least one Central Bank [The Bank of England] to resolve allocated settlements on behalf of J.P. Morgan and Deutsche Bank – who DID NOT have the gold bullion that they had sold short and were contracted to deliver. At the same time I reported on two other unusual occurrences:

1] - irregularities in the publication of the gold ETF - GLD’s bar list from Sept. 25 – Oct.14 where the length of the bar list went from 1,381 pages to under 200 pages and then back up to 800 or so pages.

2] - reports of 400 oz. “good delivery” bricks of gold found gutted and filled with tungsten within the confines of LBMA approved vaults in Hong Kong.

Why Tungsten?

If anyone were contemplating creating “fake” gold bars, tungsten [at roughly $10 per pound] would be the metal of choice since it has the exact same density as gold making a fake bar salted with tungsten indistinguishable from a solid gold bar by simply weighing it.

Unfortunately, there are now more sordid details to report.

When the news of tungsten “salted” gold bars in Hong Kong first surfaced, many people

who I am acquainted with automatically assumed that these bars were manufactured in

China – because China is generally viewed as “the knock-off capital of the world”.

Here’s what I now understand really happened:

NOT IN HIS IMAGE

Not in His Image was published in November 2006 by Chelsea Green, a publisher dedicated to the practice and politics of sustainability. Some of you may know of Chelsea Green through their books on solar heating, earth and straw bale houses, organic gardening, and other topics relating to ecology and alternative living, going back over more than 20 years. With John Lash's book, CGS is challenging the ideology and beliefs that threaten survival on this precious planet and presenting John's careful recovery and restoration of the Gnostic myth of the earth goddess, Sophia, who we today call Gaia.

This series of ten talks, which ran from February through June 2007, were interviews with my collaborator and longtime friend, John Lash, about his book.

- Joanna Harcourt-Smith

Listen

-Future Primitive (homepage)

Segment 2 -mp3 recommended

Where Babies Come From

Remember Caitlin Upton? She was Miss South Carolina Teen USA in 2007 and became famous for her response to the question, "Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?"

"I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our children."

story @ Huffpo

Broken Planet

We Party so hard, the planet broke …

The ugly truth is that economics is a science in the way that medicine was a profession while it still used leeches to balance a person’s vapours. Yes, some are always better than others, and certainly more entertaining, but they all tended to kill their patients.

The most intractable part of the current financial crisis, and the ongoing problem of the US economy is the huge tax which is levied on the American public by its corporations, primarily in the financial and health care sectors, and a political system based on lobbyists and their campaign contributions.

There are hidden taxes and impediments to ‘free trade’ at every turn. The ugly truth is that capitalism-in-practice hates free markets, always seeking to overturn the rules and impose oligopoly if not outright monopoly through barriers to entry, manipulation of the political process, distortion of regulation, predatory pricing, brute force, and the usual slate of anti-trust practices. - Zero Hedge.

Feist - Lovertits (with Gonzales) mp3
Open Season (Arts & Crafts, 2001)

continued @ motel de moka

Smoke

-Source

Cosmic Gnostic

Walter Russell

This is a tribute show for Walter Russell. A little background information and a VERY special and RARE audio lecture that Russell gave in 1953 at his University of Science and Philosophy titled "Living a Cosmic Life From the Mind".

Listen

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Lifting The Veil Episode 1.5: Reclaim Your Mind with Terence McKenna

This is a music video for Cosmic Gnostic that features the song "Reclaim your mind" wrapped around like a blanket of Terence McKenna explaining that we all need to try and reclaim our minds from the consumerist corporate clutches and create culture.

Produced by: Cosmic Gnostic/John Kale
Release date: 03/19/08
Film duration: 3 minutes 10 seconds

-cosmicgnostic.com

Instant Ice-Age

Mini ice age took hold of Europe in months

* 11 November 2009 by Kate Ravilious

JUST months - that's how long it took for Europe to be engulfed by an ice age. The scenario, which comes straight out of Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow, was revealed by the most precise record of the climate from palaeohistory ever generated.

Around 12,800 years ago the northern hemisphere was hit by the Younger Dryas mini ice age, or "Big Freeze". It was triggered by the slowdown of the Gulf Stream, led to the decline of the Clovis culture in North America, and lasted around 1300 years.

Until now, it was thought that the mini ice age took a decade or so to take hold, on the evidence provided by Greenland ice cores. Not so, say William Patterson of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and his colleagues.

The group studied a mud core from an ancient lake, Lough Monreagh, in western Ireland. Using a scalpel they sliced off layers 0.5 to 1 millimetre thick, each representing up to three months of time. No other measurements from the period have approached this level of detail.

Carbon isotopes in each slice revealed how productive the lake was and oxygen isotopes gave a picture of temperature and rainfall. They show that at the start of the Big Freeze, temperatures plummeted and lake productivity stopped within months, or a year at most. "It would be like taking Ireland today and moving it up to Svalbard" in the Arctic, says Patterson, who presented the findings at the BOREAS conference in Rovaniemi, Finland, on 31 October.

-cont. @ NewScientist

Get Off It

Listen to the Excellent Red Ice Radio interview

Nick Rosen - Going Off-Grid,
How to Escape the Big Brother System

Author Nick Rosen joins Henrik Palmgren of Red Ice Radio to talk about his book "How to live Off-Grid", how to disconnect from the big brother system, how to escape the spies all around us and how to live independently, either within our outside, of the big brother grid. Nick is a freelance journalist and behind the website Off-Grid.net. Topics Discussed: Big Brother, Intrusive Power of the State, Bankers, Money, Paying the Bills, Solar Panel, Being in the System, Snooping, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Pre-paid Phones, Data Selling, Is That an Economy, Intelligent Buildings, Information Society, Control Human Beings, purpose for all of this snooping, Predicting our Move, Ways to Thwart Big Brother, Cashless Society, Anonymous, Serco, Acxiom, Off Grid in the City, Luddite, Energy, Water, Russian Gas, Peak Oil, Off Grid America, Organic Products, Green Labeling, "Ecover", Solar panels, Anaerobic Digesters, LETS, Bartering System, Living Off Grid in the North where the Weather is Cold, Technology being Withheld, Patents and Inventions, General Electric, Electric Car, Battery, Lithium Batteries, Fuel Cells, Cold Fusion, The Smart Grid and much more.

Grow Your Own Viagra

Check out the 'Jack in the Box' bit at Jim-Ward.com
plus more @ StephanieMiller.com

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From the Huffington Post:

The Lord of Loud (Laughs)
by Steve Young

Jim Ward may not be the funniest man on radio, but if Harry Shearer ever dies...

Let me get the standard fawning journalist disclaimers out of the way. I'm not gay. Really. Look at the pictures of my kids. I am a wannabe, though not sure what I wannabe. So, when I say that Jim Ward, voice guy extraordinaire sidekick to the sassy, svelte and swell Stephanie Miller (holding down funnydom top spot on the distaff side), is the funniest guy on daily AM/FM today, I'm saying it not because of ulterior motives, but because it's true.

Buzz up!on Yahoo!That Miller and Ward are packed into the same show is almost unfair to the competition and I would hope the FCC would look into it. They are definitely the funniest kids on the left, and with no one even trying on the right ('cept maybe for Sean Hannity's infectiously irresistible and irrepressible Clinton impression) they've actually cornered both sides of the aisle's laugh market. (Note: For those at freerepublic who might want to consider the brilliant satire of Rush Limbaugh, lawyers for the word "satire" have threatened legal action if I used the term within a hundred miles of an El Rushbo reference)

Comedy on the radio has a long and rich history, from the Jack Bennys and Fred Allens (though there was actually only one of each) to the Credibility Gap (David Lander, Michael McKean, Richard Beebe and Shearer) to early Imus and Howard Stern. I've skipped over Morning Zoo radio because, well, because I'm only including what's actually funny. Like David Roth.

Ward is an unusual sort; a second banana who knows how to shine without ever stepping on the star's feet. Harvey Korman to Carol Burnett. Barney Fife to Sheriff Taylor. George Bush to Dick Cheney. And just like those stars did with their sidekicks, Miller knows exactly how to capitalize on Ward's talent.

He's Stephanie's go-to man, and not just when she's stuck. Most leading men and women are so insecure they'd never allow a secondary player get the big laugh. God knows I'm not saying that Steph is all that cocksure ( Note: I set 'em up. It's up to the reader to hit it out of the park), I'm just saying she's smart. Smart enough to hire Ward and smart enough to use his talent as much as she is able.

On the air, she'll rave about Ward, but off the air...even more. "Jim Ward is quite simply the funniest man alive, a voice deity, the only person in the world that can make me laugh while I'm crying," said Miller after a tough couple weeks dealing with the loss of a beloved pet, when she needed that support. "I'm very lucky to have him in my life. Plus, he's hot."

Inspired early on by the likes of impressionist David Frye and Mort Sahl, political/social commentary has always been a mainstay of Ward's material. And while a stunning mimic, he swears he has never stooped to the comic impressionist's hysterical, "I think it would go something like this..." set up.

Known to most video game afficionados for his classic turn as Nazi Soldier 3 in "Return to Castle Wolfenstein," Ward derives his additional revenues doing voiceovers, though he has received some face time in TV and movies.

But it is on The Stephanie Miller Show where Ward gets his chance to dazzle and he rarely misses. Those familiar to the show know that Ward's mere mention of Bush saying "toast," or his Hannity litany concerning Katrina's "buses," among a zillion others, are not only killer impersonations, but a sure sign of a hit; show tunes that audiences hum leaving the theater.

While Ward's impressions are right on, it's the content of his material and his ability to capture character, not only voice, that sets him apart from his peers.

His Bush captures the barren sprawl that is the President's thought-process with the simple, "I'm the decider," and W's even simpler war rationale with "Freedom's on the march." At his best when he uses his targets' own words and stylings to rip 'em a new one. His Donald Rumsfeld soars seamlessly through Rummy's flair for folksy "golly-gee-whilikers" answering of his own rhetorical questions. His inaccurate answers to "Guess The Quote" are nothing less than a celestial barnstorming trip through I-had-all-but-forgotten-that-name heaven.

This is not to say that Ward isn't beyond stooping for the laugh. His Dennis "Beefy McBratwurst" Hastert rests on the congressional leader's compulsion for most wursts and near fatal flatulence. His Wolf Blitzer's constipation-packed delivery or his politically-incorrect Asian accent of North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-Il, are but a few of many low-brow, but still funny riffs.

In the all too few times that Ward slips out from behind a character and into Jim Ward, such as his (sometimes not-such a conspiracy) Conspiracy Corner we get some glimpse of the passion and articulate anger that permeates through those who understand something is very wrong. And, breaking a moment from the slobbering sycophancy, if there be one bit of frustration, to date, Ward has not had the inclination to step outside of the show, in front of live political crowds, as Stephanie has, to support an issue or candidate. Ward doesn't believe that at this point his deserves or delivers the cache necessary to change minds, get people off their butts or, in the least, draw an audience. Yet it is his smart mix of humor and appreciation for the political crimes perpetrated today that provides Ward with the unfreaking believable tools to get people to pay attention. Stephanie's self-deprecating style works well for the show, but it doesn't keep her and her celebrity from hitting the streets to carry an important message of change. The substance of any plea is much more palatable to an audience when they are entertained at the same time they're being informed. It would be a shame if someone with Ward's ability, wit and charm, didn't take advantage of what he might accomplish by adding his gifted voice(s) to the political and social battles.

What about the future? The Miller/Ward (and let's not leave out the deft production ability of producer Chris Lavoie) crew makes for the perfect morning political show. But in the realm of great possibilities -- letting Ward be Ward -- Conspiracy Corner just may not be enough. That's not to say that Ward should ever leave Steph. It would be a crime for the audience and for Steph, but what could be interesting is to hear what one hour a weekend might sound like with Jim at the lead. Ward listens to Harry Shearer every Sunday. A cross between Shearer and Steph's Ward, could be potent. It wouldn't make any money. Ask Harry. But I'd give it a listen.

While some artists work best in a secondary performance role, that isn't to say that their importance is any less. Don Knotts was never meant to be a leading man, but once he left Mayberry, I was switching channels. Still, it doesn't hurt to see what giving a guy a chance might mean Here's a shout out to Jones Radio and the suits at KTLK-AM, Steph's L.A. home-base. Next time she takes a day off, forget the local fill-ins. Let Jim Ward take the captain's seat. It's about possibilities. It's about time.

Goat Men

Jon Ronson: The Men Who Stare At Goats

By NIcole Powers

The Men Who Stare At Goats is a hilarious new film starring George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor and Kevin Spacey. Unfortunately, the true story it's based on is no laughing matter, especially if you happen to be a de-bleated goat housed in the U.S. Army's top secret Goat Lab or a guest of our government at Guantánamo Bay or Abu Ghraib.

The screenplay for the movie is woven around cold, hard -- and quite frankly bizarre -- facts uncovered by British author, journalist and documentarian Jon Ronson during his investigation into the U.S. Army's all too real paranormal activities, which he chronicled in a book first published in 2005. Though fictionalized, the script features whole chunks of dialog lifted directly from actual interviews Ronson conducted for the book with high ranking army officials and those who were trained by them as psychic spies...

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SuicideGirls caught up with Ronson by phone to find out more.

Nicole Powers: In your previous book, Them: Adventures with Extremists, you covered a wide range of wack jobs of various religious and political persuasions. British fruitloops seem to be mostly confined to disseminating their ideas by standing on boxes and shouting at Speaker's Corner in London's Hyde Park, but what's so scary about American nutcases is that some of them are actually high up in the military and government and are running one of the country's two major political parties. How would you compare and contrast nutters on either side of the Atlantic?

Jon Ronson: I remember asking this CIA guy called Ray Hyman why there's so much nuttiness within the highest places of the CIA and military intelligence in America, and his answer to me was, "Because people are basically nuts, which means you're going to get a lot of nuttiness outside of the CIA and a lot of nuttiness inside the CIA." And that's the conclusion I've come to, that we're just mad, and our madness is what rules the world.

NP:

But there's something about America and crackpots that means they can rise higher in the ranks of power.

JR:

That is odd isn't it? That it happens in such high places in America. And it's true, in Goats I had a look to see if I could see anything like that happening in the British military and I couldn't at all. The only place I found that level of extreme out of the box thinking was in the American military.

What's really interesting is there's a bit in the book where General Stubblebine has tried and failed to walk through this wall, and has had all these spoon bending parties, and his fellow chiefs of staff get really worried about him and want to force him out. But it turns out they're not worried about him because they think he's irrational and they're rationalists, which is what I would have assumed, they're trying to force him out because they're all fundamentalist Christians and he has possibly been infiltrated by Satan. That was kind of the moral battle that was playing out at the top of the United States Intelligence Service - like wizards throwing thunderbolts at each other. And that's uniquely American I think.

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read it- SuicideGirls.com

Lost Sunglasses

Electric Ukelele Diabetic Coma Bliss

Tools of Information

The Gods of Technology

There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies on the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

– Mario Savio

Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.

____________________________

-Source

Betrayal

America the Betrayed

Richard C. Cook

If you want to get an idea of what America once was like, read the poems of Walt Whitman. Whitman was born in Long Island in 1819 and grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. His family was poor, but even though he left school at the age of 11 he gave himself an education by reading and working in the printing shop of a newspaper until he gradually became a published writer. He worked as a teacher and news reporter and owned his own newspaper by the age of 20.

In 1848 Whitman was a delegate to the founding convention of the Free Soil Party. During the Civil War he worked as a nurse in Union military hospitals and held several government jobs, including interviewing Confederate prisoners for pardons. Some of his greatest poems came from his war experiences, including his famous elegy upon the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, “Oh Captain! My Captain!” His great collection of poems, Leaves of Grass, was self-published. He died a national hero in 1892 in Camden, New Jersey, where thousands of people came to pay their respects. Contrary to the opinion of some, he was not a homosexual.

Whitman has always been viewed as a poet of the people, in contrast to the pretentious dandies from academia who have controlled official American culture for much of our history. He wrote of workmen, farmers, sailors, soldiers, lovers, criminals, and prostitutes. He was a hero to the Beatniks of the 1950s who tried to rediscover an authentic American voice in the streets and on the roads and highways of this great land. The spirit of Whitman was surely present through the rebellion of the 1960s, when America’s young men and women rose up and fought the Establishment to stop the Vietnam War and bring civil rights to racial minorities.

The Establishment fought back with a vengeance and, through the most egregious betrayal in history, reduced the world’s greatest industrial democracy to the pathetic shadow of its former self we are today.

-cont.

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It is time for each and every individual who values his or her own life along with the creative potential of the human spirit to begin to work with others to create a new nation and world. The government isn’t going to do it for us. Please believe me. This is not a system that can be reformed. It is a system that must be replaced. And it must be replaced by the ordinary working men and women who have been crushed, used, and abused during the past ugly half-century.

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Apocalypse NOT

2013: Or, What to Do When the Apocalypse Doesn’t Arrive

by Gary Lachman

The belief in a coming end of the world as we know it may seem understandable to people living in the first decade of the twenty-first century, but a look at history shows that it has been part of Western psychology from the beginning.

The central figure of Western religion, Jesus Christ, told his followers that the end was nigh, and most people who accepted Jesus believed that the cosmic last call would come in their lifetime. Yet Jesus worked within an age-old Jewish tradition that looked to the coming of the Messiah, a religious and political leader who would set the world to rights and, incidentally, free the Chosen People from whomever it was who had conquered them at the time. As Jesus didn’t free the Jews from the Romans—nor seemed able to free himself from them either—the Jews who denied him seem justified in their disbelief. To them, and to the Romans, the Christians who preached a coming Day of Judgment were rather like the urban oracles who inhabit most major cities today, ranting on street corners and pestering passersby to repent...

EnlightenNext Magazine

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In his Study of History, an account of the rise and fall of civilizations, the historian Arnold Toynbee argues that there are two stereotypical responses to what he calls a “time of troubles,” the crisis points that make or break a civilization. One is the “archaist,” a desire to return to some previous happy time or golden age. The other is the “futurist,” an urge to accelerate time and leap into a dazzling future. That both offerings are embraced today is, I think, clear. The belief that a saving grace may come from indigenous non-Western people untouched by modernity’s sins is part of a very popular “archaic revival.” Likewise, the trans- or posthumanism that sees salvation in some form of technological marriage between man and computer is equally fashionable. The 2012 scenario seems to partake of both camps: It proposes a return to the beliefs of an ancient civilization in order to make a leap into an unimaginable future. What both strategies share, however, is a desire to escape the present. Given our own “time of troubles,” this seems understandable enough.

Toynbee also believed in what I call the “Goldilocks theory of history,” and to me it makes a lot of sense. If a challenge facing it is too great, he argued, a civilization smashes. If it isn’t great enough, the civilization overcomes it too easily, becomes decadent, and decays. But if the challenge is “just right”—not too great and not too small—it forces the civilization to make sufficient effort to advance creatively.

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15 Must Haves

The Back Up. A Covert Shotgun Rack for Your Bed Mattress

next: The Kush

A boob separator for women who like to sleep on their sides but don't like their breasts touching. It's so unreasonably phallic we just don't know what to say.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/02/the-15-stupidest-products_n_342316.html?slidenumber=cj5%2BN5CiUfg%3D#slide_image

Deteriorata

Go placidly amid the noise and waste,
And remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof.
Avoid quiet and passive persons unless you are in need of sleep.
Rotate your tires.

Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself,
And heed well their advice, even though they be turkeys.
Know what to kiss and when.
Consider that two wrongs never make a right,
But that three lefts do.

Wherever possible put people on "HOLD".
Be comforted that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment,
And despite the changing fortunes of time,
There is always a big future in computer maintenance.
Remember the Pueblo.

Strive at all times to bend, fold, spindle and mutilate.
Know yourself. If you need help, call the FBI.
Exercise caution in your daily affairs,
Especially with those persons closest to you;
That lemon on your left for instance.

Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most souls,
Would scarcely get your feet wet.
Fall not in love therefore; it will stick to your face.

Carefully surrender the things of youth: birds, clean air, tuna, Taiwan,
And let not the sands of time get in your lunch.
For a good time, call 606-4311.

Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog
Is finally getting enough cheese;
And reflect that whatever fortunes may be your lot,
It could only be worse in Sioux City.

You are a fluke of the Universe.
You have no right to be here, and whether you can hear it or not,
The Universe is laughing behind your back.

Therefore make peace with your God whatever you conceive him to be,
Hairy Thunderer or Cosmic Muffin.

With all its hopes, dreams, promises, and urban renewal,
The world continues to deteriorate.
Give up.

~ Nat'l Lampoon