Topics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Morgenbesser

    * During a lecture the Oxford linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin made the claim that although a double negative in English implies a positive meaning, there is no language in which a double positive implies a negative. To which Morgenbesser responded in a dismissive tone, "Yeah, yeah."[1][2] (Some have it quoted as "Yeah, right." See litotes for the actual linguistic status of this hypothesis.)

    * Morgenbesser was leaving a subway station in New York City and put his pipe in his mouth as he was ascending the steps. A police officer told him that there was no smoking on the subway. Morgenbesser pointed out that he was leaving the subway, not entering it, and hadn't lit up yet anyway. The cop repeated his injunction. Morgenbesser repeated his observation. After a few such exchanges, the cop saw he was beaten and fell back on the oldest standby of enfeebled authority: "If I let you do it, I'd have to let everyone do it." To this the old professor replied, "Who do you think you are, Kant?" The word "Kant" was mistaken for a vulgar epithet and Morgenbesser had to explain the situation at the police station.[1][2]

    * On the independence of irrelevant alternatives: After finishing dinner, Sidney Morgenbesser decides to order dessert. The waitress tells him he has two choices: apple pie and blueberry pie. Sidney orders the apple pie. After a few minutes the waitress returns and says that they also have cherry pie at which point Morgenbesser says "In that case I'll have the blueberry pie."[3]

    * Morgenbesser said the following of George Santayana: "There's a guy who asserted both p and not-p, and then drew out all the consequences..." [4]

    * Interrogated by a student whether he agreed with Chairman Mao's view that a statement can be both true and false at the same time, Morgenbesser replied "Well, I do and I don't."[1][5]

    * During campus protests of the 1960s Sidney Morgenbesser was hit on the head by police. When asked whether he had been treated unfairly or unjustly, he responded that it was "unfair, but not unjust. It was unfair because they hit me over the head, but not unjust because they hit everyone else over the head."[1][5] Some of his students then argued that it may have been unjust, in that no guilt had been proved against him, but it was by no means unfair as all his fellow demonstrators got the same treatment.[2] This alternative version is sometimes attributed to Morgenbesser himself.

    * To B.F. Skinner, "Let me see if I understand your thesis. You think we shouldn't anthropomorphize people?"

    * Morgenbesser described Gentile ethics as entailing "ought implies can" while in Jewish ethics "can implies don't."[2]

    * Morgenbesser once set this as an exam question: "It is often said that Marx and Freud went too far. How far would you go?"

    * When challenged why he had written so little, he fired back: "Moses wrote one book. Then what did he do?"[1][2]

    * "If P, so why not Q?"

    * "The only problem with pragmatism is that it's completely useless."

    * When asked his opinion of pragmatism, Morgenbesser replied "It's all very well in theory but it doesn't work in practice."[2]

    * In response to Heidegger's ontological query "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Morgenbesser answered "If there were nothing you'd still be complaining!"[6]

    * At a conference on cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind, one scholar was presenting what was at the time a popular line on how "madness" had no real referent and was merely a product of power-laden "othering." His response: "You mean to tell me that it's all in my head?"

    * A few weeks before his death, he asked another Columbia philosopher, David Albert, about God. "Why is God making me suffer so much?" he asked. "Just because I don't believe in him?"[1][5][2]

    * Asked to prove a questioner's existence, Morgenbesser shot back, "Who's asking?"[7]

    * A student once interrupted him and said, "I just don't understand." "Why should you have the advantage over me?" he responded.[7]

I'd like to get some opinions on this. Roger Christie and 13 members of his ministry have been arrested by the Feds.

Last fall, the citizens of the County of Hawaii (the island) passed a resolution declaring Cannabis possession the lowest law-enforcement priority (and trust me, it is. Ice is the serious problem back home), which, along with the State MMJ law allows personal possession of up to 24 plants.

Roger has a sincere religious ministry based around the Tree-Of-Life metaphor and biblical scripture. He has been operating openly in Hawaii for about 10 years. He has a legitimate claim under federal RFRA and similar federal protections. The Feds are pissed because he organized his ministry around the idea that a member can grow more than they personally need (max 24 plants... most of these people have MMJ cards), and donate their excess to the ministry. In return, at some later date, the ministry will make a monetary donation to their family.

He has been the only open (operated from a storefront in Hilo) non-black-market supplier on the Big Island (collectives and/or dispensaries aren't quite legal yet), and one of the only places that sick and elderly patients can go to without fear of prohibition driven black-market violence.

This (along with Roger's message that Cannabis has been involved in nearly every world-wide religious practice) has seriously pissed the feds off. They want to make "an example" of him. He has so far been denied bail (the other 13 church members have been granted bail), and they all have qualified for the Public Defender (meaning all of them do not have the monetary resources for private attorneys and qualify for a court appointed attorney). The only reason the Feds can come up with to deny him bail is "he might start selling cannabis again", and that this is sufficient "possible harm to the community" that he has been denied something that even some people accused of murder receive (yeah, they got a Judge that went along with that). He even signed an agreement with a bailbondsman agency that promised not to use or associate with the Herb while the trial is underway. The Judge blew that off.

Anyway, here's a link to a current story:

http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/98642399.html

Here are some screenshots of the MapTool program Ive been learning to use. This thing is sick, and I'm getting to the point that I can start scripting Character Sheets out of macro-script, and setting up an online server that you can connect to...

I've experimented with Binaural Beats. Good stuff, but requires a good amount of mediation experience and discipline to get the most out of it.

The hysterical tones in this news article are HILARIOUS. I think this is something we can get in on.

http://newsok.com/digital-drugs-at-mustang-high-school-have-experts-warning-of-slippery-slope/article/3475464?custom_click=lead_story_title

The technology is designed to combine a tone in each ear to create a binaural beat designed to alter brainwaves. Whether it was kids faking it, the power of suggestion or a high wasn't clear to administrators who investigated the students' claims. Adding to the mystery was the fact that these kids weren't troublemakers. So the worried Lightfoot sent parents a letter warning them to be aware of this new temptation to kids.

"The parents' reaction was the same as mine. Just shocked," Lightfoot said. "You've got to be kidding."

Now other schools and drug experts are concerned about this trend just hitting Oklahoma.

"I think it's very dangerous," said Karina Forrest-Perkins, chief operating officer of Gateway to Prevention and Recovery in Shawnee. While there are no known neurological effects from digital drugs, they encourage kids to pursue mood altering substances, she said.

...
A site says that the i-doses may not be downloaded by anyone under 18 years of age.

"Come on. You know they are," Forrest-Perkins said. "No one over 18 is trying to get stoned on a song."
...

"If a parent notices a child is sitting around all the time with headphones on, they should look into what stresses are happening in the child's life ... and deal with it in a constructive way," Shlackman said.

Lightfoot said like Mustang High School parents, she's shocked over the digital drugs.

"What worries me is the ease in which some people can sell things to kids by saying that it's supposed to be mood altering," she said. "It's a real moneymaker out there."

Some Fark.com comments:

"And mood altering substances are bad, bad, bad. Except all those legal prescription pills every other commercial entices you to buy. And coffee. Those are totally good, because companies make them. So they're patriotic and American. But those filthy drugs? Even if they have no negative effects, they're bad, bad, bad."

"That probably explains the rampant lesbianism there."

"While there are no known neurological effects from digital drugs, they encourage kids to pursue mood altering substances, she said.
She said as she put down her cup of coffee."

"I have a friend whose cousin knows this guy who did a double shout of zip (zip is a digital file made up of almost pure 0). Well I guess he totally freaked and started mutilating the family dog or something. They had to put him in a mental ward and he can only eat jello with his feet. True story."

"Or maybe, "I think this is very dangerous, because if I don't, the media will spin whatever I think or say to make it seem like I support kids doing drugs." There is only one "correct" answer here. It is "This is dangerous and I am outraged." Otherwise you're instantly a felon and must be stoned to death."

"woohoo! I'm tripping iBalls!!!!!!"

"I accidentally the playback through the Bose speakers with the Monster cable."



"You boys wouldn't mind if I had a look through your MP3 player's contents, would you? Good..."

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/07/pay-and-sit-park-bench-libertarian-dream.php


The worst of Libertarianism and You-Can't-Sit-Here-Authoritarianism.....COMBINED!

[Many forces including Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation and technology companies with deep pockets are mobilizing to promote "Copyleft" in order to undermine our "Copyright.]

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/06/25/2048216/ASCAP-Declares-War-On-Free-Culture-EFF

"According to Drew Wilson at ZeroPaid and Cory Doctorow, the ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), a US organization that aims to collect royalties for its members for the use of their copyrighted works, has begun soliciting donations to fight key organizations of the free culture movement, such as Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Public Knowledge. According to a letter received by ASCAP member Mike Rugnetta, 'Many forces including Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation and technology companies with deep pockets are mobilizing to promote "Copyleft" in order to undermine our "Copyright." They say they are advocates of consumer rights, but the truth is these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of our music. Their mission is to spread the word that our music should be free.' (Part 1 and part 2 of the letter.) The collecting agency is asking that its professional members donate to its Legislative Fund for the Arts, which appears to be a lobbying campaign meant to convince Congress that artists should not have the choice of licensing their works under a copyleft license."

So last night was my usual D&D game (Johnny Brainwash is GMing 1st Ed / Osric 'a retro-clone reboot' of the original rule set).

We only had 2 of the past players, so he came over to my house with KatieMonstrrr and He, Katie, Liv, and I did a 5-6th level one-shot with pregened characters.

My girlfriend (Liv) chose a Human lvl.6 Druid and Named her Avalon (minion: bound Wolverine).

KatieMonstrrr chose a Dwarf lvl5 Fighter with 18/00 STR, platemail , a +1 sword, and a cloak of Bat Wings and Named her Brunhilda (minions: 3 human spearmen 0 lvl).

I pulled an Elf l4/l5 Fighter/Thief with some +2 magic arrows and Named him Keld (minion: an elf longbowman).

We pretty much hand-waived basic gear purchasing and set off!

(you may recognize this one)

The village at the edge of the swamp makes regular sacrifices to the black dragon who lives in the swamp. They _will_ starve if they give the dragon his tax this winter. The dragon must die. The last party that tried this was 40 years ago and they were never seen again. You find yourselves at the last gap in the large hedge rows and stare across a murky, dank, fetid scrub-filled lowland. A dark rise, barely discernible in the mist and distance, obscures part of the horizon. GO!

We picked out way through the muck, having something of a 'trail' to follow. In between a few scouting and surprise rolls it was revealed that we needed to seek out 'the ferryman' in order to cross the swamp and get to the dragon's lair (GM exposition). Then my Thief Keld made his surprise check and spotted a bandit ambush, and made his silent walk check to get back to the group to tell them about  the spearmen lying down in the brush 15 yards off the path. After a brief map sketched out by the GM, we decided to have Brunhilda and her men continue down the path while Keld, the elf, Avalon and the Wolverine would cut right about 20 yards and pace Brunhilda up the path until we got close enough to ambush the bandits.

The bandits jumped up, but the elves and the druid won surprise. Arrows rained down on the bandits, and the Wolverine charges forward and hamstrings the first bandit. Shouts of "OH GODS, OH GODS, MY LEG!!!!!!!!" ring out as the druid casts her Entangle spell and the group of bandits go down in a patch of writhing vines and brush. The Wolverine can be heard growling, spiting, and chewing among screams of fear.

Suddenly, from 3 copses of trees further down the path, more robbers charge forward! On the left of the path a group of leather clad swordsmen lead by a chainmail clad Fighter. From directly ahead where the path cuts to the right, a frothing group of axe wielding berserkers, and from a group of trees behind the 1st bandits (now sobbing and screaming) a group of crossbowman, and a Mage!

How will the heroes get out of this one?

[D]

-><- this is from Robert Anton Wilson's "Everything is Under Control" ~*~

Discordianism
                                                                                     

 Discordianism claims to be the world's first true true religion and is based on worship of Eris, goddess of Chaos. One of it's two founders has been accused of complicity in the John F. Kennedy assassination.
 While some claim the Discordian movement is a complicated joke disguised as a new religion, Discordians counter that it is actually a new religion disguised as a complicated joke.
 The Discordians are divided into two camps, according to the rule, "We Discordians must stick apart." On one side, the Erisian Liberation Front (ELF) led by Ho Chih Zen (Kerry Thornley) promotes anarchist/libertarian anti-authoritarianism, and on the other side, the Paratheo-Anametamystikhood of Eris Esoteric (POEE), led by Malaclypse the Younger (Gregory Hill), teaches a more mystic, passive doctrine, vaguely akin to Charles Fort, Pataphysics, and Deconstructionism. These two Discordianisms represent the material manifestation of the metaphysical hodge and podge (see Sacred Chao). Other high Discordian priests/priestesses include Lady L, Fucking Anarchist Bitch*(a title given her by Eldridge Cleaver), Onrak the Backwards, Mordecai the Foul, Lola of Capitola, and Fang the Unwashed.
 The founder of the Erisian Liberation Front, Kerry Thornley(Ho Chih Zen), was accused of complicity in the John F. Kennedy assassination by New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison. At first, Thornley believed Garrison was honestly mistaken, but later he decided that somebody had set him up to be the fall guy if the Oswald scenario collapsed. Atlhough Garrison never found enough evidence to convict him, Thornley still sends out bulletins on the case, claiming he and Oswald were both brainwashed by Naval Intelligence, that his memory was erased, but he has deduced what must have happened, that the Discordian Society was neither a joke nor a new religion but a CIA assassination bureau, and other astounding claims.
 Both the Discordians and the Church of the Sub-Genius eagerly distribute Thornley's accusations and denunciations.

See Also:
  Golden Apple Corps, Knights of the Five-Sided Castle, OM, Noon Blue Apples

References:
  http://www.prairienet.org/~kkbuxton/discordia.html
  Thornley- Conspiracies, Cover-Ups and Crimes, by Jonathan Vankin, IllumiNet Press, Liburn, GA, 1996, p. 6

placeholder note for artwork:

*screencap the Facebook 'Like" button that is now strewn around the web (some sites have nice big ones, get one of those for max printing resolution)

**alter a copy to say "Dislike :thumbsdown-icon:"

***make sticker-paper size, business card size, postcard size

****make pdf, post to Scribd.com

->*<-encourage flashmob style mobbings of things/places/ideas with IRL likes/dislikes

BONUS: leave empty room for someone to write in a Name tagline on the sticker/card. "Mace Windu Likes this. Richard Nixon dislikes that."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e2wy4r1510

Very interesting video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOyOcjA_T6k

[You will need:]

You will need:

A big pan.

Grated Ginger (to taste, I use about a third of the big ginger root I buy to 2-cups-each of the below ingredients)

Equal amounts of -

Soy Sauce

Water

Sugar (I use hawaiian brown cane sugar)

Instructions:

Warm all ingredients in your big pan on medium, stirring every few minutes. DO NOT BOIL.

Once you can see steam rising from the surface when you stir, turn heat down to medium-low. Stir every few minutes until all of the sugar has been dissolved (make sure to get into the corners of the pan with your wooden spoon).

Let simmer(? as long as it's just steaming.. remember, no boiling) on low to medium-low for oooooh, half an hour to 45 minutes (you're looking to evaporate extra water and thicken the sauce slightly).

LET COOL COMPLETELY.



At this point you have 2 options.

1) Marinate your choice of meat (avoid white-meat chicken with this method, stick to thighs) for AT LEAST 24 HOURS in the fridge. Grill over open flame.

2) Mix a small amount of corn starch with warm water, blend until a smooth watery mixture. Slowly add this to a few cups of your sauce until you have the consistency you want. You can bottle this in diner-style ketchup bottles for ease of application. (Use this to stir-fry white-meat chicken or other items)

Refrigerate, keeps for a frikken long time.

------------------------------------------

I have 32 chicken thighs that have been marinating in my fridge overnight for the kiddo's 11th birthday party today.

Grilled Pineapple Teriyaki Chicken-burgers FTW!

Two interesting articles on Self Control that I picked up via Technoccult.net. The first doesn't cite the study it refers to, but is an interesting revelation none-the-less.

http://www.fastcompany.com/video/why-change-is-so-hard-self-control-is-exhaustible

This leads me to the idea that Zazen type meditation is a type of 'Self Control exercise" that actually strengthens and increases the ammount of sustained self-control one is capable of.

Self-control is contagious, study finds: http://www.physorg.com/news182627098.html

Sneak peak:

http://soundcloud.com/sneakattackmedia/tom-petty-dont-pull-me-over

[Is the Vatican a Sovereign State?]

Is the Vatican a Sovereign State?
Elena Kagan and her colleagues in the solicitor general's office say it is.

http://www.slate.com/id/2255270/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvRTALJp8DM


Wow... that's pretty freakin cool.

I want one..... or 500.

I posted one of the classic Discordian Haikus to my facebook recently ("A morning math class / Quick drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to the educational system / Carry the seven"), and my cousin, an author, took it and ran with it:

Interview with Anarchy

Anarchy wore red shoes.  It wasn't what Milt was expecting, but then he had been carefully avoiding forming any expectations at all.  It wasn't often that one got to interview something as big and imprecise as Anarchy, and he wanted to be at the top of his game.

Her hair was relatively neat, but her clothes were a mess of different styles and colours, stitched together or thrown together or sometimes just tied.  One hand had a glove with three fingers, the other had a tattoo made with marker, fine lines bleeding into the skin, smudged in spots.

"When did you know you had tapped into the power of the Commons?" he asked, pen poised over his notepad.

For a moment, she didn't move, and he wondered if she'd heard him.  She had her iPod earbuds in, but he'd been told she almost never used them.  It was a comfort thing.

Almost without warning, she became animated, her mis-matched eyes locked on his as she began speaking at a breakneck clip.

"A morning math class," she said. "A Tuesday afternoon in August. In October. Five. Two. Six years ago.  On the night of the solar eclipse, when I had my first kiss.  Four times five."

He didn't write, but didn't put away his pen, either.

"And, just for background, how did you tap into the Commons at all?  Was it an accident or—"

"The best-kept secrets are the juiciest and — transparency is the king of — it was God speaking to —" she took a deep breath, smiled sweetly, and it was like she was any ordinary sixteen-year-old girl.  "I really don't know."

"You don't, or they don't?" he asked, cautiously.

"I don't know what I know," she said. "We're not big on honesty sometimes."

That, he wrote down.  He noticed her left eye was following his notepad closely, while the right was looking around the room like she was bored.  It was jarring, but he knew if he reacted, the interview would be over.

"Before your... your epiphany—"

"What's that?" she snapped. "Oh, I know. Smartass.  Shh! Sorry, continue."

He glanced at her handlers, but they didn't seem concerned.  "Before your transformation, you were on track to attend a top flight university on a full scholarship.  Is that still part of the plan, or—"

"I hope so," she said, both eyes looking straight at him.  "It's hard to — quick! — focus, but I think — drop out of school before your mind rots from — I can still attend if I really focus on — exposure to the edu — seven plus seven is fourteen and — will you shut up?"

She put a hand to her head, closed her eyes and counted back from ten.  Then she made a fist and slouched back in her seat, legs spread wide like she was a totally different person.  She regarded him, up and down.

"You know what nirvana is?" she asked.

"Um... I..."

"It's me.  I'm nirvana.  Right here, in this, up here, this is nirvana.  I know the thoughts and dreams of thousands upon thousands of people around the world.  More every day.  Zeitgeist? Fuck zeitgeist.  I am the spirit of the times, and you, you disconnected sack of bile, aren't worth my time."

He smiled politely, laid his pen on the pad and folded his arms.  She scratched her armpit, watched him carefully.

"You know what I think?" he asked.  "I think this anarchy thing is bullshit.  I think you're a regular teenaged girl with regular problems and a really great gift for the dramatic."

Anarchy sat forward, grinned at him.

"Oh, do I?" she purred.

"The only thing you know is how to act crazy," he said.  Her handlers were watching now, ready to move, hands on tasers.  He wasn't sure if they'd be used on him or her.

"I'll tell you what we — no don't — what we — please, leave him alone, he's — gomenasai — enough!" she snapped and stood up, knocking her chair over.  He got up, too, refusing to give her the upper hand.  "You want to know what we know?  We know your wife is screwing your best friend.  Right now.  And he's — please — he's hitting a spot you never c—"

He slapped her across the face, and she fell to the ground.  In a second, the handlers were all over him, and he jerked rigid as the taser hit his side.

Anarchy held her cheek, looking at him with a mixture of shock and fear.  She watched as he was dragged away, his pen rattling on the floor nearby.

"Nice try," she muttered to herself. "He could have done it.  He wouldn't, though. What, with the pen? You're insane.  No you're insane.  I just want out of this hell! Too bad, so sad!"

She looked for her handlers, busy in the hall, and then down at the pen on the floor.  She reached out a trembling hand, picked it up, and clicked it open.

"Don't you dare," she said, and then, after some contemplation.  "Carry the seven."

-MCM

http://1889.ca/2010/05/interview-with-anarchy.html

This is fucking cool, check this out:

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/05/24/150246/Mark-Twain-To-Reveal-All-After-100-Year-Wait

Hugh Pickens writes: "The Independent reports that one of Mark Twain's dying wishes is at last coming true: an extensive, outspoken and revelatory autobiography which he devoted the last decade of his life to writing is finally going to be published one hundred years after his death. Twain, the pen name of Samuel Clemens, left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century, but in November, the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain's three-volume autobiography. Scholars are divided as to why Twain wanted his autobiography kept under wraps for so long, with some believing it was because he wanted to talk freely about issues such as religion and politics. Michael Shelden, who this year published Man in White, an account of Twain's final years, says that some of his privately held views could have hurt his public image. 'He had doubts about God, and in the autobiography, he questions the imperial mission of the US in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines,' says Shelden. 'He's also critical of [Theodore] Roosevelt, and takes the view that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel. Twain also disliked sending Christian missionaries to Africa. He said they had enough business to be getting on with at home: with lynching going on in the South, he thought they should try to convert the heathens down there.' Interestingly enough, Twain had a cunning plan to beat the early 20th century copyright law with its short copyright terms. Twain planned to republish every one of his works the moment it went out of copyright with one-third more content, hoping that availability of such 'premium' version will make prints based on the out-of-copyright version less desirable on the market."


Oh, by the by, here's a handy HTML->BBCode converter (highlight something on a page, right click, select 'view source', copy source code, run through converter):

http://www.seabreezecomputers.com/html2bbcode/

So this begs the question.... WHO THE FUCK NEEDS THUMBS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghgg_fukbvU

I'm just letting you know that we obviously need a fifth one of these threads.

POST A SKETCH PLEASE, I LOVE YOUR STYLE.

http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/05/16/1453256/Quantum-Entanglement-and-Photosynthesis

medcalf writes: "Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley have experimentally shown that plants use quantum entanglement in photosynthesis. Researcher Mohan Sarovar said, 'The lessons we're learning about the quantum aspects of light harvesting in natural systems can be applied to the design of artificial photosynthetic systems that are even better. The organic structures in light harvesting complexes and their synthetic mimics could also serve as useful components of quantum computers or other quantum-enhanced devices, such as wires for the transfer of information.' According to the article, 'What may prove to be this study's most significant revelation is that contrary to the popular scientific notion that entanglement is a fragile and exotic property, difficult to engineer and maintain, the Berkeley researchers have demonstrated that entanglement can exist and persist in the chaotic chemical complexity of a biological system.'"

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100510151356.htm


Now, I'm not going to spin this into some "HOLYSHIT, WE MUST HAS IT, TOO!", but Sustained Entanglement in Living Tissue?.....that's pretty cool, right there.

http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=175779



It was a scene Saudi women's rights activists have dreamt of for years.

When a Saudi religious policeman sauntered about an amusement park in the eastern Saudi Arabian city of Al-Mubarraz looking for unmarried couples illegally socializing, he probably wasn't expecting much opposition.

But when he approached a young, 20-something couple meandering through the park together, he received an unprecedented whooping.

A member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the Saudi religious police known locally as the Hai'a, asked the couple to confirm their identities and relationship to one another, as it is a crime in Saudi Arabia for unmarried men and women to mix.

For unknown reasons, the young man collapsed upon being questioned by the cop.

According to the Saudi daily Okaz, the woman then allegedly laid into the religious policeman, punching him repeatedly, and leaving him to be taken to the hospital with bruises across his body and face.

"To see resistance from a woman means a lot," Wajiha Al-Huwaidar, a Saudi women's rights activist, told The Media Line news agency. "People are fed up with these religious police, and now they have to pay the price for the humiliation they put people through for years and years. This is just the beginning and there will be more resistance."

"The media and the Internet have given people a lot of power and the freedom to express their anger," she said. "The Hai'a are like a militia, but now whenever they do something it's all over the Internet. This gives them a horrible reputation and gives people power to react."

Neither the religious police nor the Eastern Province police has made a statement on the incident, and both the names of the couple and the date of the incident have not been made public, but on Monday the incident was all over the Saudi media.

Should the woman be charged, she could face a lengthy prison term and lashings for assaulting a representative of a government institution.

Saudi law does not permit women to be in public spaces without a male guardian. Women are not allowed to drive, inherit, divorce or gain custody of children, and cannot socialize with unrelated men.

Officers of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice are tasked with enforcing such laws, but it hasn't been an easy year for Saudi Arabia's religious police.

The decision last year by Saudi King Abdullah to open the kingdom's first co-educational institution, with no religious police on campus, led to a national crises for Saudi Arabia's conservative religious authorities, with the new university becoming a cultural proxy war for whether or not women and men should be allowed to mix publicly.

A senior Saudi cleric publicly criticized the gender mixing at the university and was summarily fired by the king.

That was followed in December by a surprise announcement from Sheikh Ahmed Al-Ghamdi, head of the Saudi religious police commission in Mecca, who published an article against gender segregation, leading to threats on his life and rumors that he had been or would be fired.


Meanwhile, the Saudi government has gone to great efforts recently to improve the image of the religious police, most notably by firing the national director of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice earlier this year. The new director Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Humain then announced a series of training programs and a special unit to handle complaints against the religious police.

Last month, however, members of the religious police in the northern province of Tabuk were charged with assaulting a young woman as she attempted to visit her son, in a move that marked an unprecedented challenge to the religious police's authority.

"There is some sort of change taking place," Nadya Khalife, the Middle East women's rights researcher for Human Rights Watch, told The Media Line. "There is clearly a shifting mentality regarding to the male guardianship law and similar issues. More women are speaking out, there are changes within the government, there is a mixed university, the king was photographed with women, they want to allow women to work in the courts and there are changes within the justice ministry. So you can witness some kind of change unfolding but it's not quite clear what's happening and it's not something that's going to happen overnight."

So here's an article from the "New World Order University" that rips on my friend Klint Finley's (of Technoccult and Psychitech) blog.

http://newworldorderuniversity.com/?p=3073

Lots of lulz there. He even brings up 'hive-mind' and cel-phones as orbital mind control lazors.

Oh, and Klint got a (brief) interview on one of the CNN blogs in a post about LOST.

http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/04/geek-out-the-real-dharma-initiative/

[Pope Rails Against the Internet and Transparency]

Raaaaiiiiilllls I tell you!

Pope Rails Against the Internet and Transparency
from the lots-to-be-opaque-about dept.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/04/26/2254205/Pope-Rails-Against-the-Internet-and-Transparency?art_pos=110

"At a conference on digital media at the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI attacked the idea of transparency in the Internet age, warning that digital transparency exacerbates tensions between nations and within nations themselves and increases the 'dangers of ... intellectual and moral relativism,' which can lead to 'multiple forms of degradation and humiliation' of the essence of a person, and to the 'pollution of the spirit.' All in all, it seemed a pretty grim view of the wide-open communication environment being demanded by the Internet age."

It's totally and absolutely NSFW. You have to read from the bottom up. The interesting happens on the fourth post from the bottom of this page:

http://languefolie.posterous.com/?page=38

Enjoy.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18723-time-lords-discovered-in-california.html

Time Lords walk among us. Two per cent of readers may be surprised to discover that they are members of an elite group with the power to perceive the geography of time.

Sci-fi fans – Anglophile ones, at least – know that the coolest aliens in the universe are Time Lords: time-travelling humanoids with the ability to understand and perceive events throughout time and space. Now it seems that people with a newly described condition have a similar, albeit lesser ability: they experience time as a spatial construct.

Synaesthesia is the condition in which the senses are mixed, so that a sound or a number has a colour, for example. In one version, the sense of touch evokes emotions.

To those variants we can now add time-space synaesthesia.
I see... time

"In general, these individuals perceive months of the year in circular shapes, usually just as an image inside their mind's eye," says David Brang of the department of psychology at the University of California, San Diego.

"These calendars occur in almost any possible shape, and many of the synaesthetes actually experience the calendar projected out into the real world."

One of Brang's subjects was able to see the year as a circular ring surrounding her body. The "ring" rotated clockwise throughout the year so that the current month was always inside her chest with the previous month right in front of her chest.
Regenerating patterns

Brang and colleagues recruited 183 students and asked them to visualise the months of the year and construct this representation on a computer screen. Four months later the students were shown a blank screen and asked to select a position for each of the months. They were prompted with a cue month – a randomly selected month placed as a dot in the location where the student had originally placed it.

Uncannily, four of the 183 students were found to be time-space synaesthetes when they placed their months in a distinct spatial array – such as a circle – that was consistent over the trials.

A second test compared how well time-space synaesthetes and ordinary humans could memorise an unfamiliar spatial calendar and reproduce it. Time-space synaesthetes turned out to have much better recall than the time-blind majority.

Brang suspects that time-space synaesthesia happens when the neural processes underlying spatial processing are unusually active. "This enhanced processing would generalise to other functions of spatial processing – mental rotation, map navigation, spatial manipulation," he says.

Brang did not speculate on whether time-space synaesthetes could regenerate, or if they have two hearts: both key characteristics of Time Lords.

Journal reference: Consciousness and Cognition, DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2010.01.003

----------------------------

This has sparked some serious curiosity, and an urge to find references to these types of mind phenomena in occulted sources (Zen/Sufi/A.:A.:/etc, etc) and draw some lines around these Starbuck's Pebbles.

I know that states like these can be induced and practiced by finding the right trigger and manipulating your set and setting. More thoughts later.

http://www.truthout.org/welcoming-a-cia-official-fordham58142

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100326/ap_on_fe_st/us_odd_cheaper_e_mail_font

'Battlefield Earth' writer J.D. Shapiro (Men in Tights, etc, etc) tell us why his penis lead him to collaborate with Scientologists. Great read for his humor and insights into working with the Scientologists.

http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/movies/penned_the_suckiest_movie_ever_sorry_MdXedZpTMWJmfpw80Xc7aO/0

Just got this via Nick Pell:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/28/special-relationship-us-u_n_516217.html

Reading thro it right now.

[Note: before you ask, this has nothing to do with dark matter. See below!]


http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/03/24/found-90-of-the-distant-universe/



Monkeys can be quite ingenious sometimes.

http://technoccult.net/archives/2010/03/25/revolution-history-and-praxis-technoccult-interviews-johnny-brainwash/

Thought I'd share this with the forum.

Heh, it's 5:35 am, and I'm done.


EDIT:: New version up here - http://www.scribd.com/doc/29062360

Go look, tell me what you think.

http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1381

I didn't know there were six Zatoichi films staring Shintaro Katsu. 

I finally picked up the pro version of a sweet heightfield terrain editor called L3DT. I made a couple of blog posts to my portfolio blog when I tried the trial version:

http://joshuafontany.blogspot.com/


The first picture down here is a hand vectorized (by me) compilation of 2 of the early 1990's era FASA maps (which they based on maps of the Ukraine, Black Sea, and Aral Sea areas):

"Atlas of Barsaive", a mapping project for the gameworld Earthdawn (currently produced by Redbrick, and published by Mongoose Publishing, with the new 3rd Ed due in July '09).

A similar project for Tolkien's Middle Earth can be found here: http://www.me-dem.org/

So far, I have vectorized almost all of the map information present in the original FASA game line into a PDF atlas.


You can find that PDF release here:http://jaf384.aisites.com/earthdawn/Atlas_of_Barsaive_by_Telarus_KSC.pdf

Next up is to incorporate real-world DEM data (Digital Elevation Map) and align the in-game features with the real world features. Then manipulate the DEM data to add in large scale Barsavian features that don't exist on the real world map, like the Thunder Peaks mountain range, or basins for the local Jungles and Lava Seas. Then I plan on adding specific Named location from the game and then I'll apply a level of Erosion data to increase the detail.

The goal is to have a very high-quality 3d terrain of the main game-world areas which I will render in Maya, then incorporate into another PDF or Wiki project, animations, and other projects.



First up, I downloaded a set of SRTM30Plus topographical/bathymetry files from http://topex.ucsd.edu/WWW_html/srtm30_plus.html

Loading these into Global Mapper, I re-project these into a Winkel Triple projection, centered on the 45degree East longitude line. This is a commonly used map projection which minimizes the distortion in the central area of the map.

I re-projected this map because the SRTM30 datafiles are a flat x-y grid, and therefore have distortion near the poles. The Winkel Triple projection (a modified azmuthal projection) is currently the standard for National Geographic society maps, so many of the intended audience will find the slight distortion familiar.

Next up, I will export a heightfield for the specific terrain I'm interested in, and then I will begin to edit the gameworld features into it with the excellent application L3DT, by Aaron Torpy. This app allows meta-map level manipulation of terrain features, robust fractal noise and erosion features, climate-based texture-splatting, robust MegaTexture generation, and a lot more! Here's a shot from L3DT's 3d rendering window of Crater Lake, Oregon:

AND THEN

Atlas of Barsaive 2



Onwards!

Still learning the new L3DT tool, and I have to say it is made of mittens and win. I have also learned that I can get 90m resolution topography of the area I'm interested in, and am currently downloading it from the CGIAR-CSI website, which has me drooling.

I'm going to whip out a few throw away concept maps with my 1Km scale source, interpolated into 500m scale. Here's the area with a false elevation color scale (click all images for full size):


Now, I'm taking that into L3DT and importing a high-res copy of the above image as the texture-map. I have also hacked L3DT's 3d rendering engine, Sapphire, with my own custom 128bit Elev scale based on the above false elevation color.

Here are 2 pics, the first with the imported texture-map (no polygon lighting), the second with the my custom height-based scale (polygon lighting by default). As you can see the results are very comparable.




The above images are over the Crimean Peninsula looking east-ish. This is the location of one of the largest Volcanoes in the Earthdawn World, Mount Bloodfire (hey, it's a Trollish name, whaddya expect?), and this view is looking towards the Named location, Deadman's Gullet. This area is inundated with volcanic activity, and most of the 'sea' is a molten bed of lava with occasional solidified rock islands.

As the game features airships, and the mining of "True Elements" this location is a hotly contested area full of air pirates, and Theran mining vedettes (stone airship, about ww1 submarine sized).

I will next be adding a rough outline of how I would like to see Mt Bloodfire look and then play around with some of the other terrain tools.

AND THEN

Atlas of Barsaive 3



Here's a shot at the new Mt Bloodfire volcano. Pretty slick, eh?



Well, I probably won't save the file, this was quick work done with my wacom tablet and some of the basic L3DT tools. I plan on working at a better scale (90m per pixel) once those GeoTIFF finish downloading and unzipping. I hope I can use more of L3Dt's terrain-specific algorithms at that scale, and if so I can play around with the 'design map' to automatically place volcanoes, and such. We'll see.

Note: The 90m GeoTIFFs are going to be awkward to work with, and probably impossible to work with all-at-once. I'm thinking of working in "supertiles" of 3x3 Geotiff tiles. This gives me a 18,000x18,000 pixel workspace at a time, and allows me to edit over 12 seams (think a # symbol) at a time. Then I'll just have to deal with the larger seams, etc, etc.

L3DT is made to handle super-large terrain, with a built in mosaic feature(max rez 131,072x131,072), so even that wouldn't be loaded into memory the whole time.

Now that I have the Pro Version, I can start carving out the new mountain ranges that the FASA maps have overlayed onto the irl elevation data. Right now I have a rainFlow calculation running (it takes a few hours) to give me a black and white (greyscale) riverMap.

This is a sketchbook thread. Post your drawings and doodles here.

These first few pages are from a creature design project for class. Keywords were eldritch, aboreal, cephalopod, and I'm scanning them now.

So, continuing the grand old tradition, yadda yadda, etc, etc...

Next week is the AIPD student faculty mixer, and there will be a button press machine (y'know "flair"-style buttons), and I have access to the templates and will be able to get a few runs pressed off quickly.

ITT: IDEAS/MEMEBOMBS/IMAGES appropriate for buttons. Should range from simple/small/low-res to larger circular formatted text.

I'll do my own hunting after my couple of hours of sketching homework tonight (also wanted to leave myself a reminder).


---------------------------------------------------

BLACK SHEEP ARE STILL SHEEP (inverse color the words BLACK SHEEP) - think about font..

a conclusion is simply where you stopped thinking (no punctuation on purpose) -font

A real human being is like this comparison. (maybe)

Tis an ill wind that blows no minds.

a belief is just a thought you keep having

You were reading this, but now you're not.

You Are Now Breathing Manually

Do you own your own reality tunnel?

THIS IS A DISTRACTION (graphic?)

The man in the green jacket will tell you what to do next.

------------------------------------

thanks for any help

EDIT: Button size is 2 inch diameter, 12 to the page.

This term I've been taking "Figure Modeling" where we work out human forms in clay (oil based clay, which is a lot easier to work with than water based clay, in some sense).

I'm just starting my Final (a Bust of a fictional character) and thought I'd share the last 9 weeks of work with all you spags. I'll break them up by project into separate posts, just to avoid a total image wall.

First up was a model of my own hand:

So some spags I know quite well through the PDXOcculture group have started an all-ages music venue/hang-out spot/weirdness magnet call THE PARLOUR, right next door to the Chaos Cafe:




THE WORKER-OWNED COOPERATIVE VENUE WITH A SWEET 'STACHE

Live music, theater, vegetarian/vegan fare, and tasty microbrews.
Plus art, clothing, books, zines, and much more.

Fri - Sat: 7:00 pm - 12:00 am · Sun: 4:00 pm - 12:00 am
2628 SE Powell Blvd · Portland, OR 97202

And have already gotten a good review in the Willamette Weekly: http://wweek.com/editorial/3602/13353/

The point being, 2 of the main organizers (Phiz, and Jon Fenderson) are good friends, very much self-identifying Discordians, and know I hang out online with you crazy spags.

THEY WANT PROPAGANDA!

For the walls, to hand out, and to be a general point of access to modern Discordian thought.

At the moment, I'm seriously strapped for funds, or I'd just be raiding all of the other threads here and printing shit out. (They already have a ton of RAW and related book on sale via the R6XX.com folks.)

CRAM> If you still have access to a printer @ work, would be up for sending me a 'care package'?

Anyone else have any ideas?

http://religionclause.blogspot.com/2009/11/indian-tribe-sues-under-treaty-to-get.html
------------------------------
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Last month, three people died after spending time in a sweat lodge as part of a "Spiritual Warrior" retreat conducted by self-help author and speaker James Arthur Ray. Each participant paid over $9600 to attend the retreat at the Angel Valley Retreat Center in Sedona, Arizona. (CNN). Now, according to a report this week from Sedona.biz, members of the Lakota Sioux Tribe, upset over non-Indians appropriating Native American ceremonies, has filed a federal lawsuit demanding prosecution of James Arthur Ray. The complaint (full text) in Oglala Lakota Delegation of the Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council v. United States, (D AZ, filed 11/2/2009), cites to provisions in the 1869 Treaty of Ft. Laramie that provides:

If bad men among the whites, or among other people subject to the authority of the United States, shall commit any wrong upon the person or property of the Indians, the United States will, upon proof made to the agent, and forwarded to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs at Washington city, proceed at once to cause the offender to be arrested and punished according to the laws of the United States, and also reimburse the injured person for the loss sustained.

The complaint explains that a wrong was committed on the Lakota's property because the Oinikaga sweat lodge ceremony is part of the Lakota's oral tradition which, according to the United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Art. 31, the Lakotas have a right to maintain, control and protect.

Posted by Howard Friedman
------------------------------

Now, I have no problem with this fucktard getting prosecuted for hurting people in a totally fucked up attempt at a sweatlodge ceremony (dumbass made the 'lodge' with a layer of plastic tarping, preventing the venting of excess steam and basically turning it into an oven), but I find it very interesting that the tribe is suing on the grounds that his actions harmed their "right to maintain, control and protect" their traditions.

To quote the comments from the religionclause blog:
"Creative lawyering, in the best sense of the phrase."
&
"I see at least three major legal problems with this suit: (a) the UN Declaration is not binding international law; (b) the conduct of ceremonies is not a protected form of intellectual property under US law or any IP treaties to which the US is signatory; (c) as I read the cited provision of the Lakota treaty, it deals specifically with crimes against the Lakota. I don't think it is applicable to torts, which an IP infringement would presumably be. (There is such a thing as criminal copyright infringment, but I don't see that as being applicable here.) The only criminal act alleged is destruction of evidence, which even if valid would not seem to be a crime against the Lakota."

https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/9336/Thesis%20Laurel%20Narizny.pdf?sequence=1

Judging from the abstract, this Laurel person is on the correct Motorcycle.

-=Presented to the Department of Religious Studies
And the Honors College of the University of Oregon
In partial fulfillment of the requirements
For the degree of
Bachelor of Arts
June 2009=-

Abstract: Not all spiritual activity is commonly acknowledged as "religion." In a broad sense, religion is defined as the various ways humans negotiate their relationships with the transcendent, whether alone or in communities. The struggle to reconcile traditional pre-modern religious ideas about the world with the postmodern worldview, heavily influenced by the "deep play" that uses humor to break the hold of logic on the human mind, has given rise in the past sixty years to a new phenomenon: joke religions. A synthesis of occulture, counterculture, carnivalesque inversion, and vernacular reactions to institutional religions, joke religions are "authentic fakes" that are simultaneously authentic religions and humorous satires of other religions. They can be subdivided into satirical religions such as Discordianism—sincere religions, focused heavily on deep play, that can provide genuine religious experiences—and parody religions such as the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster—insincere, atheistic, extended parodies. Since there are virtually no scholarly works about joke religions as of yet, this paper is intended to be a starting point for future research.

EDIT: Oh, yeah. I found this by googling 'radiofreediscordia.org'..........

Corporations Now Have a Right To "Personal Privacy"

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/10/02/1251203/Corporations-Now-Have-a-Right-To-Personal-Privacy?art_pos=32

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes

"Thanks to a recent ruling (PDF) by the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, corporations now have a right to 'personal privacy,' due to the application of a carelessly worded definition in the Freedom of Information Act.  FOIA exempts disclosure of certain records, but only if it 'could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.' But in its definitions, FOIA makes the mistake of broadly defining 'person' to include legal entities, like corporations. The FCC didn't think that 'personal privacy' could apply to a corporation, so they ignored AT&T's claim that releasing data from an investigation into how AT&T was overcharging certain customers would violate the corporation's privacy. The Third Circuit thought that the FCC's actions were contrary to what the law actually says. So now the FCC has to jump through more hoops to show that releasing data on their investigation into AT&T's overcharging is 'warranted' within the meaning of 5 USC 552(b)(7)(c) before it can release anything."

Click here to read the comments @ Slashdot.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26154821-23109,00.html

ENGINEERS who invented a brassiere that converts quickly into a gas mask, pathologists who determined that beer bottles can crack your skull even when empty and Irish police officers who mistakenly wrote tickets to "Driver's License" have all won "IgNobel" prizes.

Prizes also went to Zimbabwe for issuing banknotes that range in value from one Zimbabwean cent to 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollars, Mexican scientists who made diamonds out of tequila and executives of four Icelandic banks that suffered spectacular collapses.

The IgNobel prizes are given out by the Harvard-based humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research.

The Public Health prize went to Elena Bodnar of Illinois, who designed and patented a bra that can be quickly converted into a pair of gas masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander.

Ireland's police won the literature prize from writing more than 50 traffic tickets to a frequent visitor and speeder named Prawo Jazdy.

In Polish, this means "driver's license".

Pathologist Stephan Bolliger and colleagues at the University of Bern in Switzerland won for a study they did to determine whether an empty beer bottle does more or less damage to the human skull than a full one in a bar fight.

"Both suffice in breaking the human skull," Mr Bolliger said.

"However, the empty ones are more sturdy. This is because the pressure of the beer, aided by carbonation, makes a full beer bottle explode quickly."

Gideon Gono, governor of Zimbabwe's Reserve Bank which is struggling to fight runaway inflation, won an award "for giving people a simple, everyday way to cope with a wide range of numbers - from very small to very big - by having his bank print bank notes with denominations ranging from one Zimbabwean cent to $100 trillion Zimbabwean dollars".

The economics prize went to managers at Kaupthing Bank, Landsbanki, Glitnir Bank and Central Bank of Iceland "for demonstrating that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks, and vice versa".

Donald Unger of California was honored for a lifelong experiment in which he cracked the knuckles of his left hand but never his right for more than 60 years to prove that cracking your knuckles does not cause arthritis.

Other winners included farmers who showed that naming your cows makes them give more milk, researchers who used panda droppings to break down household trash and a scientist who calculated why pregnant women do not fall over.

http://www.sergebrunier.com/gallerie/pleinciel/index-eng.html

Short explanation here: http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/09/29/0049214/The-Night-Sky-In-800-Million-Pixels

(with mirrors listed in the comments, because of the slashdot effect)

Most advertisements only evoke one or two emotions. This one manages to make me feel despair, disgust, fear, and rage, all at the same time.

[Microsoft has] truly taken it to the next level.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cX4t5-YpHQ



On the other hand, this was pretty good:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyas7BrbUFY

[Sixty-five percent were drug cases.]

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/09/obama-backs-expiring-patriot-act-spy-provisions/

Obama Backs Extending Patriot Act Spy Provisions

The Obama administration has told Congress it supports renewing three provisions of the Patriot Act due to expire at year's end, measures making it easier for the government to spy within the United States.

In a letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department said the administration might consider "modifications" to the act in order to protect civil liberties.

"The administration is willing to consider such ideas, provided that they do not undermine the effectiveness of these important authorities," Ronald Weich, assistant attorney general, wrote to Leahy, (.pdf) whose committee is expected to consider renewing the three expiring Patriot Act provisions next week. The government disclosed the letter Tuesday.

It should come as no surprise that President Barack Obama supports renewing the provisions, which were part of the Patriot Act approved six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

As an Illinois senator in 2008, he voted to allow the warrantless monitoring of Americans' electronic communications if they are communicating overseas with somebody the government believes is linked to terrorism. That legislative package, which President George W. Bush signed, also immunized the nation's telecommunication companies from lawsuits charging them with being complicit with the Bush administration's warrantless, wiretapping program. That program was also adopted in the wake of Sept. 11.

These are the three provisions due to expire:

*A secret court, known as the FISA court, may grant "roving wiretaps" without the government identifying the target. Generally, the authorities must assert that the target is an agent of a foreign power and/or a suspected terrorist. The government said Tuesday that 22 such warrants — which allow the monitoring of any communication device — have been granted annually.

*The FISA court may grant warrants for "business records," from banking to library to medical records. Generally, the government must assert that the records are relevant to foreign intelligence gathering and/or a terrorism investigation. The government said Tuesday that 220 of these warrants had been granted between 2004 and 2007. It said 2004 was the first year those powers were used.

*A so-called "lone wolf" provision, enacted in 2004, allows FISA court warrants for the electronic monitoring of an individual even without showing that the person is an agent of a foreign power or a suspected terrorist. The government said Tuesday it has never invoked that provision, but said it wants to keep the authority to do so.

"The basic idea behind the authority was to cover situations in which information linking the target of an investigation to an international group was absent or insufficient, although the target's engagement in 'international terrorism' was sufficiently established," Weich wrote.

The American Civil Liberties opposes renewing all three provisions, especially the lone wolf measure.

Michelle Richardson, the ACLU's legislative counsel, said in a telephone interview, "The justification for FISA and these lower standards and letting it operate in secret was all about terrorist groups and foreign governments, that they posed a unique threat other than the normal criminal element. This lone wolf provision undercuts that justification."

AND THEN....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/23/watch-doj-official-blows_n_296209.html

WATCH: DoJ Official Blows Cover Off PATRIOT Act

In the debate over the PATRIOT Act, the Bush White House insisted it needed the authority to search people's homes without their permission or knowledge so that terrorists wouldn't be tipped off that they're under investigation.

Now that the authority is law, how has the Department of Justice used the new power? To go after drug dealers.

Only three of the 763 "sneak-and-peek" requests in fiscal year 2008 involved terrorism cases, according to a July 2009 report from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Sixty-five percent were drug cases.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) quizzed Assistant Attorney General David Kris about the discrepancy at a hearing on the PATRIOT Act Wednesday. One might expect Kris to argue that there is a connection between drug trafficking and terrorism or that the administration is otherwise justified to use the authority by virtue of some other connection to terrorism.

He didn't even try. "This authority here on the sneak-and-peek side, on the criminal side, is not meant for intelligence. It's for criminal cases. So I guess it's not surprising to me that it applies in drug cases," Kris said.

"As I recall it was in something called the USA PATRIOT Act," Feingold quipped, "which was passed in a rush after an attack on 9/11 that had to do with terrorism it didn't have to do with regular, run-of-the-mill criminal cases. Let me tell you why I'm concerned about these numbers: That's not how this was sold to the American people. It was sold as stated on DoJ's website in 2005 as being necessary - quote - to conduct investigations without tipping off terrorists."

Kris responded by saying that some courts had already granted the Justice Department authority to conduct sneak-and-peeks. But Feingold countered that the PATRIOT Act codified and expanded that authority -- all under the guise of the war on terror.

Feingold, the lone vote against the PATRIOT Act when it was first passed, is introducing an amendment to curb its reach. "I'm going to say it's quite extraordinary to grant government agents the statutory authority to secretly break into Americans homes," he said.

Watch the video at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/23/watch-doj-official-blows_n_296209.html

http://tinyurl.com/yafa8e6

This is a live radio and webcast from Iowa, Carl's Cannabis Corner. If you're even vaguely interested in what the result of the Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal Supreme court case actually means to other religions that use sacraments listed in the Controlled Substance Act, this show lays out the case points and interviews the Clergy involved in 6 major cases (pending, and recently decided) at the state and federal level. It's about 2 hours long, and the show starts @ about 4-5min in (don't try to track, tho, their player don't like it).

This week's guest on Carl's Cannabis Corner will be Tom Brown of Arkansas.

We'll start by asking Tom to briefly describe the case he has pending in the United States Supreme Court.

Then we'll discuss the following, but I'm not sure in what order:

My cases, which are many, up to and including the Iowa District Court case I have pending.

Nancy Harris and Sacred Truth Mission (Puna, Hawaii)

Oklevueha Native American Church of Utah, Oklevueha Native American Church of Hawaii (Honolulu), and Oklevueha Native American Church of Iowa.

Daniel Hardesty and the Church of Cognizance (AZ)

Eddy Lepp (CA)

I like the fact that this reporter actually uses the word chaos with the correct context:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/22/whos-got-the-mortgage-pro_n_294169.html

Oh, this is a good quote too:

In dismissing 14 foreclosure cases in 2007 based on a lack of proper documentation, a federal judge in Ohio admonished the lenders, stating their argument that "'Judge, you just don't understand how things work'...l

Also, Democratic House Member Marcy Kaptur of Ohio is urging people to squat in their own homes....

http://www.kaptur.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=355&Itemid=1


[Both of these via the Black Sun Gazette.]

http://blacksungazette.com/?p=399

Nick Pell (previous Esozone co-ordinator, and genuine post-occult bad-ass) has laid out a streamlined version of Christopher Hyatt's Detensing method combined with Taoist, Tantric, and Zen exercises. If you are genuinely interested in brain-change, and not afraid of the trauma that always goes along with it, this is a must-read. One of the best write-ups of breath-work and muscle-armor detensing techniques I've run across without all of the occult metaphors. I've done most of the exercises describes at various times and they've worked for me.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/08/29/1750259/James-Murdoch-Criticizes-BBC-For-Providing-Free-News?art_pos=7

Posted by timothy  on Saturday August 29, @02:30PM
from the you-dont'-trust-the-gov't-to-report-news-fairly? dept.
government
themedia
news
Hugh Pickens writes "News Corporation's James Murdoch says that a 'dominant' BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK and that free news on the web provided by the BBC made it 'incredibly difficult' for private news organizations to ask people to pay for their news. 'It is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it,' says Murdoch. 'The expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision.' In common with the public broadcasting organizations of many other European countries, the BBC is funded by a television license fee charged to all households owning a television capable of receiving broadcasts. Murdoch's News Corporation, one of the world's largest media conglomerates, owns the Times, the Sunday Times and Sun newspapers and pay TV provider BSkyB in the UK and the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, and Fox News TV in the US." Note that James Murdoch is the son of Rupert Murdoch.