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I love the Japanese title, but I didn't recognise the あらためまして < is this a set phrase?

And if i past it in the task bar I can read it, but anywhere else it's little blocks.

Only heard one Edward Sharp but Loved it.

A Volte Il Cuore - Andre Boccelli.

I only seem to post in this thread when something like this is playing.

I love the cover (excuse beatings of own drum), a girl I know suddeny revealed herself to be uber tallented and I asked her to make it for me.

Also, big thanks to people who let me use stuff.

HERE IT IT.

Now, those scungy lines on it are because I made it in word and used Bullzip to do it as a PDF, so if you know how to fix that let me know and I'll make a nicer one, and also probably make some comics bigger so the words are clearer.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/31068944/Inter-Mittens-10

Ohh and at least Page 2 is NSFW. But that should be it.

From Here:

Didn't I tell you, Don Quixote, sir, to turn back, for they were not armies you were going to attack, but flocks of sheep?

Alot of the trouble, in general, seems to come from a need to maintain the whole 'us and them' thing, which means we always need to break out the semantics and work out who's us and who's them. Some of the more nationalistic may bething 'the nation' us, and 'those scary brown people' to be them. Or some consider the good, clean breast loving type male to be us, but the scary sexually twisted non-hetrosexual to be them.

And of those two things, I met one covering them both; a gay Indian who annoied me by whining about how he couldn't get a job for discrimination. From who? THE CHRISTIANS. Them.

Discordians, who make a point of NOT taking everything so very seriously, really ought to be immune to the most of this nonsense. But that seems to very largely be not the case. We are us, and them is 'the greyface.'

Don Quixote would attack Windmills for the rationalre that 'they might be giants' (yes, the origin of the group's name). He also tells us that 'Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be!'. (don't press me on this, I haven't read the book, i'm working off wikiquote). So Quixote fights the windmills, and we fight the Greyface, because lets face it, it's more fun this way . But that's the point; it's fun.

There seems to be this borderline paramilitary tone to a good deal of Discordian discussion, like these Grayfaces aren't just something we've made up to make fun of how seriously people take things, but are indeed a very real and dangerous set of people, a band of politicians, neocons, Christians, concerned individuals, police and whoever else seems to deserve to be lumped with THEM. THEY want to remove everyones individuality. THEY are intollerent. THEY are out to get you. THEY want a new world order. THEY kicked your puppy (bastards!).

But really THEY didn't, because THEY don't exist. I mean sure they exist; in the same way that gays, foreigners and Christains do exist, and the same way in which every complaint against these people has at least one case in which it is legitimate. But, we could also say that THEY are the peopel with moustaches, and as Anton Wilson would say, the information which is consistant with our reality tunnell come in, the rest satys out.

The thing is that to me Discordia isn't about them at all, it's about us. If we create a fictional 'them' such as the Barvarian Illuminati to help enhance our experience, then that's cool. (See also; Cat's Cradle). But our aim should be to enhance US and OURSELVES, not to fix THEM. So often the prevailing attitude is 'THEIR shit is fucked up, let's go fix it'. Well, everyting is kind of messed up, but if we fix OUR shit, at least we get that benefit.

Same issue with O:MF. {Hippy warning;} I'd like to see a lot more love and a lot less hate. The spirit I see O:MF in is 'Something fuicked with my reality tunnel, and it was a profound and valuable experienace for me, and I want to be able to give that experience to other people. Not other people suck, let's fuck with them.

I'm all for an innapropriately epid war against the Greyface, with pleanty of hyperbole and shaking of fists. But let's not forget that it's a game, and we make the rules, and us and them is a fairly useless over-complication of the universal rule that simply, some people are dicks.

I epically do NOT need to fill space, but i certainly DO like to stuff things full of stuff so I'll probably hammer that in soon.

Allow me Friday night to spit something out.

OK, I've recived the front cover from a freind (an image fo a lady called Mary Toft, or Tofts, very interesting, look her up.)

The theme kind of died a little; now there's more an 'empasis' on the meatspace thing than a theme.

I need to do up a contents page, maybe spit out one more piece of writing and it's done.

Semi tentative release date is 'this weekend, probably Saturday'.

Anything you super uber want jammed in, let me know.

I'd sooner be lied to.

When I read it the big thing that came to me was the idea that 'battling the greyface' is really a way to express the struggle againt the suffocation of seriousless and blandness that we largely uncvonciously subject ourselves to.

However, instead of this kind of recognition that we're fighting a battle in our own heads, for the freedom of our own mind, there seems to be this idea that there in fact is an 'enemy greyface', not in your head but 'out there'. And if we can work out what he is (the politicians, institutions, schools, corporations, neocons etc) we can make war with it.

I'm all for fighting windmills, as long as we don't forget they're windmills.

Anyway, the whole part of the thingy talking about inventing enemies, kind of tied in with this idea set that I've had floating around for a bit.

Excellent

About two thirds of the way through my third, or fourth reading of Moby Dick. Moby Dick is one of the few American books, that I (As British) would consider as a truly peerless example of how to write prose. Every time I read it, I find levels of meaning that I had perhaps not seen, or understood, (Or maybe forgotten) the previous time. Melville's talent for seeing the nobility in his characters, and settings really sets him apart from all of his contemparies, and into a very exclusive genre, consisting of only himself.
His singular style, and uncompromising, (and not ever particularly popular, or fashionable) style mean that it will (indeed, did) stand the test of time, without ever being faddy. And I think I will never be at a point in my life where I don't need to read it again.

I Want to enjoy Moby Dick, but it annoys me that three out of four chapters are writing an encyclopedia instead of extending the action. I 'get' what's good about it (and when its good its great) but I just want to hear the story without all the diversions.

I was meaning to provide a reference salad for Faust's point. There's some in there with the stats that suggest it does work, then others that say it doesn't. Plus a couple which suggest Capital Punishment INCREASES the liklihood of violent crimes, which seems consistant with Fausts point. The impression I get is that it is NOT an efficient way to discourage crime, but figured I'd let people read the stats as they saw fit.

Also, I'd generally agree with your point about redress.

Criminologists report that the death penalty does not deter murder

A recent study published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology reported that 88% of the country's top criminologists surveyed do not believe the death penalty acts as a deterrent to homicide.  Eighty-seven percent of them think that the abolition of the death penalty would not have a significant effect on murder rates and 77% believe that "debates about the death penalty distract Congress and state legislatures from focusing on real solutions to crime problems." (M. Radelet and T. Lacock, DO EXECUTIONS LOWER HOMICIDE RATES?: THE VIEWS OF LEADING CRIMINOLOGISTS, 99 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 489 2009)

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-about-deterrence-and-death-penalty

SOme other stats suggest the opposite:

During the temporary suspension on capital punishment from 1972-1976, researchers gathered murder statistics across the country. In 1960, there were 56 executions in the USA and 9,140 murders. By 1964, when there were only 15 executions, the number of murders had risen to 9,250. In 1969, there were no executions and 14,590 murders, and 1975, after six more years without executions, 20,510 murders occurred rising to 23,040 in 1980 after only two executions since 1976. In summary, between 1965 and 1980, the number of annual murders in the United States skyrocketed from 9,960 to 23,040, a 131 percent increase. The murder rate -- homicides per 100,000 persons -- doubled from 5.1 to 10.2. So the number of murders grew as the number of executions shrank. Researcher Karl Spence of Texas A&M University said:

      "While some [death penalty] abolitionists try to face down the results of their disastrous experiment and still argue to the contrary, the...[data] concludes that a substantial deterrent effect has been observed...In six months, more Americans are murdered than have killed by execution in this entire century...Until we begin to fight crime in earnest [by using the death penalty], every person who dies at a criminal's hands is a victim of our inaction."

Notes Dudley Sharp of the criminal-justice reform group Justice For All:

    "From 1995 to 2000," "executions averaged 71 per year, a 21,000 percent increase over the 1966-1980 period. The murder rate dropped from a high of 10.2 (per 100,000) in 1980 to 5.7 in 1999 -- a 44 percent reduction. The murder rate is now at its lowest level since 1966. "

http://www.wesleylowe.com/cp.html

Again, same arguement, this time from David B. Muhlhausen, Ph.D., a Senior Policy Analyst in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation.

Using a panel data set of over 3,000 counties from 1977 to 1996, Professors Hashem Dezhbakhsh, Paul R. Rubin, and Joanna M. Shepherd of Emory University found that each execution, on average, results in 18 fewer murders.[17] Using state-level panel data from 1960 to 2000, Professors Dezhbakhsh and Shepherd were able to compare the relationship between executions and murder incidents before, during, and after the U.S. Supreme Court's death penalty moratorium.[18] They found that executions had a highly significant negative relationship with murder incidents. Additionally, the implementation of state moratoria is associated with the increased incidence of murders.

But then somebody else points out the homocide RATE does not increase with executions;

From 1976 to 1996, the number of executions per year in the United States has increased from 0 to just under 60. The homicide rate per 100,000 population has remained constant at just under 10. 3...

   In 1967, a study by Thorsten Sellin 6 compared the homicide rates between neighboring states in which some had the death penalty, and others did not. Sellin also compared murder rates before and after states either abolished or reinstated the death penalty. He found no statistically valid difference in rates in both cases. These results were summarized in a book by J.Q. Wilson. 7 The study might have been affected by the numbers of executions at the time; they had dropped to near zero in the U.S., so that even those states with death penalty laws on the books were not exercising them fully....

A 1998 research study conducted for the United Nations concluded: "This research has failed to provide scientific proof that executions have a greater deterrent effect than life imprisonment. Such proof is unlikely to be forthcoming. The evidence as a whole still gives no positive support to the deterrent hypothesis."

This same source concedes thAT...

A study by Isaac Ehrlich found that the murder rate responded to changes in the likelihood of execution. He concluded that 7 or 8 murders were prevented by each execution from 1933 to 1967....

A study by Kenneth Wolpin showed that each execution, on average, reduced the number of murders in England by 4...

Though they also said...

Comparing adjacent states where one state has the death penalty and the other does not, frequently shows that the states with capital punishment have a much higher homicide rate...

   The FBI  Uniform Crime Reports Division publication Crime in the US for 1995 reports that there were 4.9 murders per 100,000 people in states that have abolished the death penalty, compared with 9.2 murders in those states which still have the death penalty. "In no state has the number of murders diminished after legalizing the death penalty"....

Canada's homicide rate has dropped 27% since the death penalty was abolished in that country (for ordinary crimes) in 1976. For many years prior to 1976, the federal government had converted each death sentence to life imprisonment.

(All from http://www.religioustolerance.org/execut4.htm)

Finally, my favourite economists say this;

Associated Press reporter Robert Tanner writes an article today stating that evidence strongly supports the conclusion that the death penalty reduces crime. As with most media coverage of controversial issues, there is a paragraph or two in which the other side makes its case. In this instance, the lone voice arguing against the efficacy of the death penalty is Justin Wolfers, a professor at Wharton who just can't seem to keep his name out of our blog. Tanner does his best to make Wolfers look bad, quoting him as dismissing these studies because they appear in "second-tier journals."

Given the evidence I've examined, I believe that Wolfers is on the right side of this debate. There are recent studies of the death penalty — most bad, but some reasonable — that find it has a deterrent effect on crime. Wolfers and John Donohue published an article in the Stanford Law Review two years ago that decimated most of the research on the subject.

Analyses of data stretching farther back in time, when there were many more executions and thus more opportunities to test the hypothesis, are far less charitable to death penalty advocates. On top of that, as we wrote in Freakonomics, if you do back-of-the-envelope calculations, it becomes clear that no rational criminal should be deterred by the death penalty, since the punishment is too distant and too unlikely to merit much attention. As such, economists who argue that the death penalty works are put in the uncomfortable position of having to argue that criminals are irrationally overreacting when they are deterred by it.

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/11/does-the-death-penalty-really-reduce-crime/

Carlo Bergonzi, Renata Tebaldi, Etc., Tullio Seraphin; St. Cecilia Academy Orchestra & Chorus – Puccini: Madama Butterfly - Act 1: Ecco! Son Giunte Al Sommo Del Pendio

It's not my fault I'm pretentious.