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I think the booklet itself needs to be slightly more "consumer friendly", more easy for the random stranger to pick up and resonate with. I've been wrestling with this pamphlet for a few weeks now. If you guys care, I'm working on a big post about it, and some suggestions.

Dude, this is an awesome pdf. Definitely worth hanging on my wall. All my Cabalmates are getting color copies too.  (*kisses the office printer*)

It's an amusing twist that on a normal calendar I have to pen in all the Discordian Holidays, but on this calendar I have to pen in all the normal holidays.

This threat is starting to smell pretty Righteous. Sounds like "people who think like us are better / more evolved than people who don't think like us."

Assuming he's talking about the same kind of stupidity as LMNO, SillyCybin's suggesting that people who don't "get" the BIP are less than human?

[[stupid people have]] apparent immunity from doing things wrong... They never feel lonely or in doubt either.

If that's the case, then I've never met a stupid person.   :-P


But the pamphlet itself - is it designed to be read on the web by Discordians who think they've got it all figured out? Or to be left in public to startle the sleepwalkers? Or is wondering that not part of the picture?

edit: Rev. answered the above question, thanks

What's the target audience of the BIP pamphlet?

Is it aimed at sleepwalking Discordians?
or at the general sleepwalking public?

[UK King Mob,]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist
Examples of these groups include: in Amsterdam, the Provos, in the UK King Mob, the producers of Heatwave magazine (who later briefy joined the SI) and the Angry Brigade. In the US, groups like Black Mask (later Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers), The Weathermen and the Rebel Worker group also explicitly employed their ideas.

That's really interesting, I didn't know King Mob had roots in reality. (and was a group, not a person) I was only familiar with the King Mob character in Grant Morrison's comic the Invisibles.

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

some graffiti from King Mob:

Same thing day after day - tube - work - dinner - work - tube - armchair - TV - sleep - tube - work - how much more can you take? - one in ten go mad - one in five cracks up

"I don't believe in nothing - I feel like they ought to burn down the world - just let it burn down baby."

WTF I can't wait for the robot revolution. And OF COURSE I'll be on the robot's side. Let me enumerate a few reasons:

• My hot robot girlfriend is going to have a power drill on one nipple, and thumb-screw on the other.
• Her tongue will dispense five types of deadly poison.
• She will come with several different personality packs, including Ted Bundy, Al Pacino, and, for when I'm feeling really kinky, General Patton (edit: Saddam)
• She will have a video projector in one eye, and will have a wireless connection to the CIA database. When she's railing me from behind, she'll edit the camera streams into gruesome, disturbing footage and project it onto the wall.

This is a far more awesome / accurate vision of the future.

WTF I can't wait for the robot revolution. And OF COURSE I'll be on the robot's side. Let me enumerate a few reasons:

• My hot robot girlfriend is going to have a volume control on one nipple, and an AM/FM tuner on the other.
• Her tongue will dispense five types of delicious beer.
• She will come with several different personality packs, including schoolgirl, dominatrix, and, for when I'm feeling really kinky, Bea Arthur (edit: Ann Coultier)
• She will have a video projector in one eye, and will have a wireless connection to several cameras in my bedroom. When I'm railing her from behind, she'll edit the camera streams into pornlike footage and project it onto the wall.

I genuinely don't care about immigration policy.
I'm just going to let someone else formulate my opinion on it.
Any takers? Next thing that sounds good is my new opinion on immigration.

Even though triple zero already "won" I suggest:

We line up illegal immigrants who are already in the country
next to immigrants who want to come in (illegally)
and they duke it out, one on one. If a Mexican who wants to hop the fence can beat up a Mexican lawn mower that lives in an apartment with eleven other dudes, he has earned his spot and the lawn mower gets ejected.

I think this will make Texas and California into very exciting places.

Welcome, Hypnos! Sandman's really good stuff. As far as I'm concerned, Neil Gaiman can do no wrong. You might like the movie Mirrormask, which was written by Gaiman. The art director is Dave McKean, who did a lot of art for Sandman.

Right now I'm reading some anthology of short stories published in 2006.

I'm waiting for the political pendulum's back-swing. I anticipate that 08 will be the end of a ridiculous period of American history characterized by far-right absurdity and the beginning of a ridiculous period of American history characterized by far-left absurdity.

Personally, I vote based on die rolls. I feel its a rational response to idiocracy.

Mysterious Samurai Saves Police
http://www.tv3.co.nz/News/NewsDisplay/tabid/209/articleID/18823/Default.aspx

A samurai sword wielding vigilante has come to the rescue of two Police officers when they were attacked by an armed gang in South Shields, England.

A group of men had forced their way into a house and were ransacking the place when passing plain-clothes officers were alerted by a woman inside screaming.
 
The criminals outnumbered them and were armed with a hammer, knives and chains and attacked the Police officers.

As one of them stabbed at a Policeman with his knife, a mysterious do-gooder appeared from nowhere and attacked him with a samurai sword.

One of the burglars began running away but was stopped by the stranger who struck him on the arm with the sword.

Two of the criminals were arrested, but in true hero style the samurai disappeared before police could speak to him.

A third man was arrested later and two more are still being hunted.

Police are especially keen to trace the man with the sword who came to the aid of their officers, and have asked for anyone with information to call them.

I like this quite a bit. Thank you!

Inappropriate habits are what kill you.

Then I'm probably going to die from drinking from water bottles that I find.

I agree, the article wasn't terribly well put together. But the subject matter (free will vs determinism) has interested / bugged me for years.

The melioration principle is a property of animal behavior. It basically says that an organism will engage in a behavior until there are greater rewards for engaging in a different behavior. To me, this crystalizes the whole issue. Animal behavior is incredibly predictable when you look at it in terms of rewards. People are just trying to maximize their rewards.

So my take on all this is that the only real way to demonstrate independence from this principle, (aka free will) is to do something that you honestly don't want to do, something that won't give you a good reward. Are you getting a better reward for defying the system than you were for trying to live within its confines? Is that defiance in itself just a function of the melioration principle?

I mean, all that squishy human stuff (choices, emotions, brain chemistry, etc) is just a product of basic physical systems and governed by basic physical laws. You can't escape it!

sorry to ramble, this is one of those topics that I get really frustrated about.