Undulating Ungulate

Illegal drugs can be good for you panel discussion
BBC Radio 4
Wednesday 29 October 2008 (rpt: Saturday 1 November at 22:15)

The scientist and writer Dr Susan Blackmore argues that drugs can be good for you. She says most of the problems of drug abuse are really caused by drug prohibition. It would be much better if we decriminalised drugs and taught young people how to use them properly and safely instead. She says that our society doesn’t take the “dangerous wonder” of mind-altering chemicals seriously. As a psychologist Susan wants to understand the mind. She has experimented with hallucinogenic drugs because she wanted to learn “how to face demons and terrors, how to let go of self, how to explore the further reaches of human experience.” She wants a society in which adults are free to take drugs for their own reasons: for comfort and delight, to ease pain, to inspire insight or creativity, and even to face death. Just as we can distinguish between alcohol use and alcohol abuse, so should we accept that there’s a place for positive drug use.

(via specialknives)

As much as Blackmore has kind of annoyed me with several of her previous books, I approve wholeheartedly with this approach.

This may be a reasonable time to point out Sacred Intentions
– a solid look inside the recent John Hopkins psilocybin studies, among the first rigorous mainstream research into psychedelics and therapy done in many years (Of course, they could just ask Stanislav Grof what he found over the last four decades…) which is a reasonably even handed approach. We reported their results back when they came out – but they were overwhelmingly positive, in terms of experience, effect, and lasting positive change in subjects.

And, of course, the point is, we are merely rediscovering something ancient.

Andean Mummy Hairs Show Hallucinogen Use
Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News

Oct. 29, 2008 — Andean mummy hair has provided the first direct archaeological evidence of the consumption of hallucinogens in pre-Hispanic Andean populations, according to recent gas chromatography and mass spectrometry analysis.

Obligatory shout out to Terence McKenna, who wrote extensively about the role of psychedelics in ancient cultures, and argued persuasively for their role in cultural evolution.

So yeah. Please can we have an open mind and explore our minds and consciousness responsibly with all available tools without being criminalised?

Filed by billy at 12:14 pm under consciousness,culture,utopia
4 Comments

We´ve been here before, and, in many ways, we could quote that earlier post word-for-word, changing only the name of the single.

But yes.

Guns´n´Roses are apparently releasing Chinese Democracy on Nov 23. You can listen to streaming audio of the single Chinese Democracy here.

It´s almost impossible to say anything worthwhile about this event happening or not. The hype and sheer bullshit surrounding the band (whoever the hell that is these days) makes any attempt to even listen to the music (should it be released) on its own terms difficult. They were raised to the heights and torn apart by the same vicious frenzied machine that will whip itself into a froth over this however it plays out. So it goes. (Just ask Britney Spears…)

At least for me, Guns´n´Roses changed irrevocably when the Rose/Stradlin songwriting partnership ended with Izzy Stradlin leaving the band in ´92. The name may be the same but it is a different beast, and has been for the better part of two decades. However, for all the malignment heaped upon his ego/excesses, Axl Rose was the last great lyricist rock produced, and I will probably buy the album anyway. \m/

Filed by billy at 7:09 pm under culture
9 Comments

Filed by billy at 3:28 pm under meta
2 Comments

Minimalist dude plays trumpet against an ambient background of Lebanon being bombed around him.

STARRY NIGHT (excerpt) 6.31 min

a minimalistic improvisation by:
mazen kerbaj / trumpet
the israeli air force / bombs

recorded by mazen kerbaj on the balcony of his flat in beirut,
on the night of 15th to 16th of july 2006.
© mazen kerbaj 2006

(ganked from Dissensus)

Filed by billy at 11:24 am under culture
Comments Off on how to be bombed

Damn, I´m not even looking for this stuff. The technology/privacy slope continues slipping, here are three recent threads on slashdot…

Every email in the UK to be monitored
Nationwide internet censorship proposed for Australia
Tool to allow ISPs to scan every file you transmit

As ever with slashdot, the comment threads are well worth reading for more information and context.

More on the Australian net censorship here – probably more interesting in the local mindless sheep following legal way.

And hey, why not, a RollingStone story on Chinese surveillance

Amazing how swiftly awesomeness could be taken away to propagate social models designed before we changed our environment with technology. But changing the environment changes us, and how we live. Marshall McLuhan is the forgotten prophet of the digital age.

I think media are so powerful they swallow cultures. I think of them as invisible environments which surround and destroy old environments. Sensitivity to problems of culture confluct and conquest become meaningless here, for media play no favourites: they conquer all cultures. One may pretend that media preserve and present the old by recording it on film and tape, but that is mere distraction, a sleight-of-hand possible when people keep their eyes focused on content.

(Actually, that quote is from Edmund Carpenter, who collaborated uncredited with McLuhan on Understanding Media).

Anyway. Feel the water warming, little froggies?

Filed by billy at 7:17 pm under oblivion,technology
6 Comments

But the bathtub isn´t in the backyard, and it feels like it should be.

Walking through town last night I saw an advertising hoarding featuring All Blacks which said ¨tackling child poverty¨ and I was all like ¨Whoa! NZ is dealing with it´s child poverty in a real high profile way! Cultural watershed!¨ and then google says it is a Save the Children thing in general rather than an NZ thing and I was like oh I guess I was drunk.

If anyone wants to help me move the bathtub into the backyard, let me know. The landlord is away. It´s the ideal time to modify the place. Fait accompli fashion.

Oh yeah and if you like music at all you should check out MUTANT SOUNDS because it really needs to be seen to be believed and they probably have in some sense something for everyone. Old obscure demented sounding albums, with download links.

Albums get reviews like ¨Simultaneously gristly and smurfy, Neue Krankenscheine’s candy coated lo-fi synthpunk blare is a can’t-miss combination of strafed Martin Rev pulse and impish Der Plan-like dada synthiness. A high water mark of Neue Deutsche Welle tape culture. ¨

and

¨Both profound and profoundly jaw dropping, the esoteric moves of this massively rare and insanely obscure 300 copy Japanese marvel have until now remained the sole preserve of a handful of heavyweight collectors. It’s time to let the cat out of the bag on this one. The dankly cavernous and unsettling acid maneuvers of Dome circa their first three LP’s (though absent vocals) are the nearest antecedent I can summon for the principal thrust of the sound here. So too, there’s a ritualistic dimension to this stuff thats also a bit suggestive of something like Vasilisk or The Hybryds, though the arcane initiatory atmosphere here is far more penetrating that anything I’ve heard either of those two muster. Combine that with a Johan Hedran-like overlay of wafting, heat-warped systemic electronics and your at least in the general neighborhood, but these are only indicators pointing toward the occult sonic universe that The Mask Of The Imperial Family are enacting here. ¨

or

¨PERSONA NON GRATA-33.3 RPM ANALYSIS OF SOUND WITH CHEESE, 6″ FLEXIDISC, 200?, USA
A big slithering Smegmatic pile of stroboscopic psychedelic entrails that sounds like it was yanked wholesale from the cartoon carcass of the L.A. Free Music Society, courtesy of this Blazen Y Sharp and Blazen, Sharp & Gerber-affiliated combo (their work to be found elsewhere on MS), with a sound not at all far from Solid Eye at their most densely deformed and taffy stretched.¨

Well, I´m going slow-download-crazy.

Filed by billy at 12:18 pm under culture
2 Comments

Will this go down as McCain´s ¨Dean Scream¨ moment?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5T1-qwL5u5A&feature=player_embedded

Anyhow. Barring assassination, and outright electronic election fraud, Obama is the next American President. Sure, it´ll still be a three week circus, but the race feels over. And the local elections seem to have an interestingly nasty vibe this year. What a time to be ignoring news. We´ll see how it goes.

Filed by billy at 11:23 pm under politics
1 Comment

The moose picked up our cactii from soundmoose´s excellent care today, for transplanting to a recently cleared warm place.

Reasons cactii are awesome:

* They are basically indestructible.

* Low maintenance – it doesn´t really matter if you forget to water them for months.

* They regenerate and spawn more of themselves. Gonna need some more pots.

* If you have the right kind of cactus, they contain special love.

* Man, they get big when you aren´t looking.

Yay.

Also: Ningizzida are playing at the Adelaide tonight. No notice, of course, but they are my favourite local band, very worthy, and you should go.

Filed by billy at 5:32 pm under consciousness,the moose
Comments Off on Cactii are awesome

But here is the first meme on this blog. But it is an interesting one, with potential to be really fun. (Stolen from tatjna.)

Also, this memelike thing: If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now (even if we don’t speak often or ever) please post a comment with a completely made up, fictional memory of you and me.

Go on. 🙂

Filed by billy at 1:19 pm under Uncategorized
6 Comments

For all of those who´ve wanted to see Captain Tightpants getting it on…

(Is actually safe for work.)

Filed by billy at 11:37 pm under culture
2 Comments