Verwirrung Blog roundtable discussion

[Telarus]

It's a bit pinealist.

Yeah, it started off that way. Most of the Discordian references are crammed up front. It borders on Pineal Post-Occultism, but it's mostly just Post-Occultism in the rest of the article.

[Cain]

Still, its pretty cool. 

Basically,I want Verwirrung to be a vehicle both for things Discordians/Subgenii/Mutants/etc would like, but also a vehicle for expressing your own interests and areas of expertise.  That's why I want good material, and to raise the profile, because then it becomes a relatively high profile platform, allowing you to further your own agendas via the power of Web 2.0....whatever those agendas and aims may be.

Also, has everyone decided on a name for your given area of interest?  Like Iason with ChaoSkeptic?  Just that when we launch tomorrow, I was going to do a big page introducing everyone and what they will be writing about, as well as updating the About page with that information.  Just a paragraph on your interest and, if you want, contact details for people to leave you links or hints or angry emails telling you that you suck etc

For example, my draft introduction.

Cain

Hi, I'm Cain.  You may remember me from such posts as "LSD or Opiates - which is best for watching the Presidential election coverage with?", "Putin is the ultimate Bond Villain and Final Boss of the Internet" and, the now infamously banned essay "Dick Cheney wears a gimp mask and eats live puppies".  Anyway, most of you will know me, either from my posts here, on my old blog, the PFLD, or from the PD forums.  My own little section on the blog, "Tactical Polyvalence", will concentrate on politics, warfare and economics.  I'll try not to report on the most obvious and covered stories of the day, but the back-room deals, the advances in weapon technology, the attempts at sneaking through legislation and other underreported events.  Though I cannot promise I wont occasionally take cheap pot-shots at idiot bloggers and journalists, on slow days.

[Richter]

I'm editing a few bits in the CRAZY PREPARED vein, and I caught up on this thread's stuff.  Are we fire - at - will, or waiting for the 27th? 

[Cain]

Well I was planning on waiting, because its Lewis Carroll's birthday and all sorts of blogs will be doing crazy and different things on that day.  It seems a good day for the launch.

I'll create a category called CRAZY PREPARED for you as well.

[LMNO]

What do you think of my section being called "SEEING IS BELIEVEING"


I think it fits, yeaH?

[Cain]

What do you think of my section being called "SEEING IS BELIEVEING"


I think it fits, yeaH?

It does.  Do you want me to delete "Starbuck's Gavel" then?

Also http://www.principiadiscordia.com/blog/cain/verwirrung-20/

Feel free to introduce yourselves.  I'll hit some blogs later today and see if I can drum up some interest.

[LMNO]

Yeah, Starbuck's Gravel is too PD-centric.


Ok, I'll do an intro today.

[Requia ☣]

Right, since there's some tiny bit of interest in my first person rants, Ill actually do them.  I'll come up with a name and intro later, here's a rough draft for a blog entry.

I had an MRI today.  (Nothing is wrong with me, some researcher just wants pictures of my brain).  The experience is interesting.  It starts with a checklist, basic information to make sure there's nothing in my body the magnets are going to have fun with.  Next up they have me change into hospital garb.  I'm then told to wait, for about an hour, since they secretly scheduled my visit after the time they told me, for fear I'd be late.

After a great deal of waiting, and signing various release forms, liability waivers, and so forth, I'm taken to a small room, the last of my possessions (a book and the locker key with my street clothes) are stripped from me,.  Then I get to go into a larger room, with even less space thanks to the monstrously large hunk of plastic, super-conducting wire and liquid helium.

I put on the headphones, bizarre things out of the science fiction of a century ago, with no metal, and sound pumped through a tube of air into my ears.  Then the technician straps my head in place.  Thus begins the bondage.  The bench is slid backwards slowly, and I find myself unable to move my arms, which are now pinned between my body and the sides of said tube.

Something they don't tell you about, when fussing over the potential claustrophobia. MRI machines vibrate.

They start playing a movie, I brought Fight Club with me, since I'll only get to watch the first half of whatever it is, and I hate the second half of fight club.

Something else they don't tell you about MRIs, they produce a variety of sensations as they scan.  A strange tugging sensation of my abdomen.  A spot of my skin starts to vibrate, slowly moving up my right side.  My nose starts to itch.  Then my eye.

The movie continues playing just long enough to remind me of the first rule of Fight Club.  Which I will say no more about.  The researcher asks me to please stop moving my foot, and they start playing some cognitive tasks for me, think about this word, watch for green dots, don't think about anything specific.

I cheated on the last one, and wondered why the windows 2000 desktop I was staring at had a program called 'SSH secure shell client' when SSH stands for secure shell.

Finally, after about an hour inside this glorified bondage device, I'm pulled out of the machine, given my things back, and sent on my way.  They even gave me pictures, which I share with you now.

[Triple Zero]

shouldnt an MRI scan be much sharper than that? I always thought they have really high resolution.

[Cramulus]

nah, neurology's mostly guesswork

[Richter]

It's roughly akin to diagnosing a hardware problem on a computer you didn't understand or build through quirks it produces in the I/O devices or shooting it with 32 flavors of cosmic ray.

Some science will always seem funny in retrospect. 

[LMNO]

Back to the point at hand:

Cain, was the idea to post twice a week?

[Cain]

Yeah, on your chosen topic at least.  If you want to post more, or rant about how MCR sucks, or how you're going to come into work tomorrow with a shotgun and make your supervisor sorry...then you're free to do that as well.  Its a lower limit, not an upper one.

[LMNO]

I'm thinking tuesdays & Fridays, most likely.

[Requia ☣]

Somebody remind me how to register log in and post on the blog.  (I may or may not be registered).