All that can accurately be said about a man who thinks he is a poached egg is that he is in the minority.
- James Burke, The Day the Universe Changed
(writing is going well, by the way, though i could use minions to do some of the donkey work processing)
Filed by billy at 6:01 pm under quotes,research
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One of the more mindblowing reminders that everything that seems solid is really a bunch of resonant vibrating frequency nothing.
Concrete and steel doesn’t usually do that.
via a conversation with nonwrestler
Filed by billy at 12:45 am under research,the world
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One of the best and briefest summaries of the history of quantum physics and recent developments in the field I have ever read. Very cool. Recommended.
“In the history of physics, we have learned that there are distinctions that we really should not make, such as between space and time… It could very well be that the distinction we make between information and reality is wrong. This is not saying that everything is just information. But it is saying that we need a new concept that encompasses or includes both.” (Anton Zeilinger)
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So Obama got the nod. And swore allegiance to Israel. Just in case people were thinking anything much was going to change in, say, the Palestinian situation.
Obama also described the US bond with Israel as “unbreakable today, unbreakable tomorrow, unbreakable for ever” and said he spoke as a “true friend” of Israel.
Remember – being the least evil major candidate is different from being the best possible candidate. This bitch will need hard riding.
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Let’s pretend this game is making some kind of valid point about objectification of women in the media. Porn star or pop star?
[EDIT: I has removed the embedded game cos the music was annoying me. It can be found here.]
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The IEEE Spectrum special report on The Singularity is probably worth a look.
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And finally, headline of the day: inflatable electric car can drive off cliffs. Also has insane mileage per charge, and floats. And you assemble it yourself out of two cardboard boxes. Cool.
Filed by billy at 12:00 pm under culture,oblivion,politics,research,utopia
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Easily one of the most interesting reads on the web, skilluminati has relaunched for 2008 with a bang. (The guy behind brainsturbator, for those who remember.) Basically, if I had more time and inclination, this site would be doing something more like skilluminati or cryptogon rather than the haphazard whatever it is. Something more substantive, in any case, though that is what I write books for.
The current attention grabbing quote near the top of the page is
Be honest with yourself: who are you asking for justice? Are you expecting the same power structure that has been running the United States of America for the past 50 years to give up because you’re right? Because you can prove mathematically that two buildings collapsed faster than they should have? Because you have thousands of pages of evidence to prove every point you’re making? Does the truth matter? Seriously. Does the truth matter? Or does power matter?
Anyway. Among the gold, he points out Global Trends 2007-36 (right click to download pdf), which he describes as
Prepared by the Development, Doctrine and Concepts Centre of the UK Ministry of Defense, this report outlines a nightmare future where the Western World will be increasingly called to use lethal force on out of control Third World populations over simple resources like water and food. They envision a future with endless “urban low-intensity conflict” where the poor are kept inside prison cities which become so dangerous only military Special Forces can patrol them. AS IF THAT WAS NOT ENOUGH, the report even sees enemies within, claiming “The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx.” All of which sounds insane, but doesn’t even begin to do this report justice. This is essential reading.
But yeah. If you are interested at all in what the hell is going on and where we are going, this is a pretty good place to start. I remember reading the equivalent of this sort of thing a decade ago tipping me off to a lot of what was coming and what to watch for.
The site is well worth a trawl through, as there is plenty of wonderful older material, for instance this article Charles Tart on Consensus Trance and Normal Human Consciousness
“The clues from hypnosis research, experiments into the influence of beliefs upon perceptions, and teachings from the mystical traditions, led Tart to see how normal waking consciousness is the product of a true hypnotic procedure that is practiced by parents, teachers, and peers, reinforced by every social interaction, and maintained by powerful taboos. Consensus trance induction — the process of learning the “normal waking” state of mind — is involuntary, and occurs under conditions that give it far more power than ordinary hypnotists are ever allowed. When infants are first subjected to the processes that induce consensus trance, they are all vulnerable and dependent upon their consensus hypnotists, for their parents are the ones who initiate them into the rules of their culture, according to the instructions that had been impressed upon them by their own parents, teachers, and peers.”
I was watching TV at 3am this morning (I’m not proud of it) and was flicking between a live press conference by Dubya – itself an extreme rarity in his reign of incompetence, as they rarely let him out without a leash – and the new Indian 20-20 Cricket League. Holy shit. A blind man interpreting the movements of an erratically electrocuted gerbil would give more coherent answers than the US president. And all-star 20-20 cricket is just weird.
Also. The title of the last post was a more or less random yet somehow appropriate seeming juxtaposition with the content. How did you find it?
Filed by billy at 12:17 pm under consciousness,politics,research,the world
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The always fascinating and provocative Howard Bloom has a column at Scientific Blogging.
Screw ‘Sustainability’ – And Cheer Up About It is the latest, and is a unique take on where we are at.
If this were a random universe, there would be a thousand different biochemical systems competing with each other on this planet, a thousand different families of life. But there aren’t. The only biochemical family on this planet is the clan of DNA, the clan of biomass. And you and I are part of that biomass family. We are part of that biomass team.
[...]
There is 1.097 sextillion cubic meters of rock, magma, and iron beneath our feet. That’s a one-with-21-zeroes-after-it stock of raw materials we haven’t yet learned to use. We haven’t yet learned to turn that sextillion-square-meter stockpile into fuel, food, or energy. We haven’t yet recruited it into the clan of biomass, into the clan DNA.But that’s the imperative of biomass, to take these inanimate molecules and bring them into the system of life. Does this sound like mere fantasy? It’s not! Bacteria called lithoautotrophs are already doing it. Lithoautotrophs are eating the rock two miles beneath our feet and three miles beneath the sea, turning granite into food, turning raw stone into biomass, recruiting new atoms into the imperialistic project of DNA.
There’s more, as there always is with Bloom. Well worth checking out, as of course are his books Global Brain and The Lucifer Principle, which both took my head when they came out.
Speaking of reducing things to their most quotable, try Explicit Content Only – NWA’s Straight Outta Compton, edited down to just the explicit content. Funnier than expected.
Meanwhile, of course, we’re still doomed. Food riots ‘an apocalyptic warning’
Basic access to food is slipping out of reach for many people in developing countries.
The cost of the rice has risen by more than three-quarters in two months and the price of wheat has more than doubled in the same time.
…World Vision Australia head Tim Costello says the situation is desperate and chronic.
“It is an apocalyptic warning,” he said. “Until recently we had plenty of food. The question was distribution.
“The truth is because of rising oil prices, global warming and the loss of arable land, all countries that can produce food now desperately need to produce more.”(my emphasis)
[ ganked variously from disinfo and cryptogon, on my sidebar.]
Filed by billy at 11:18 pm under culture,research,the world
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Fascinating interview with Aaron Russo, director of America: Freedom to Fascism. He talks about the movie, which you can watch for free with his blessing, how the monetary system works to enslave people, the future of a chipped population, and the need for civil disobedience.
Filed by billy at 11:37 am under consciousness,politics,research
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Iraqi Biometric Database Could Become Extermination List, Pentagon Says
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are being enrolled in a U.S military-run biometric database, seeded with Saddam Hussein’s own spy files. The Army created the database to help the occupation forces tell good guys from bad guys, but the program’s manager Lieutenant Colonel John Velliquette admitted to DANGER ROOM’s Noah Shachtman that the Iraqi biometric database could become a “hit list if it gets in the wrong hands.”
Of course, something like that could never happen here, when we are all carrying biometric ID’s to prove we aren’t “terrorists”.
Filed by billy at 12:33 pm under research,technology
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Hugo Chavez gets a lot of bad press in the mainstream Western media. Occasional articles like this slip through, however, which demonstrate so totally why he rocks hard.
According to a 59-page economic blueprint for the next six years, free-market capitalism’s influence will wane with the proliferation of state enterprises and mixed public-private firms called social production companies, the objective being to generate funding for community programs.
“The productive model will principally respond to human necessities and be less subordinate to the production of capital,” the report says. “The creation of wealth will be destined to satisfy the basic necessities of all the population.”
Fuck yeah.
Filed by billy at 1:01 pm under consciousness,politics,research,the world
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In 2005 the World Bank commissioned a study called “Where is the Wealth of Nations? Measuring Capital for the 21st Century“. The link is to an article and interview with the study’s author (fascinating in itself for the directions the libertarian interviewer tries to lead him and the relative economic neutrality he maintains).
Worldwide, the study finds, “natural capital accounts for 5 percent of total wealth, produced capital for 18 percent, and intangible capital 77 percent.”
That’s fine. I realised a long time ago that one of the biggest ways the economic system is broken is that, barring a drought or natural disaster, there is no difference between a boom and a recession in terms of physical stuff that exists, only in our beliefs.
Natural capital is land and natural resources, produced capital is machines and structures; what is intangible capital?
People, skills, education, and social institutions.
The biggest correlate with wealth they found was the “rule of law” index; essentially a measure of social cohesion.
I guess what I like about this is that, at least to my reading, implicit in the successful functioning of the capitalist system – all about selfishness and competition above all else – is the extent to which people cooperate.
Anyway. It’s an interesting read. Oh, and this is a direct link to a pdf of the World Bank report.
Filed by billy at 11:45 am under politics,research,the world
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Just to introduce something I added to my links at the side: what does it mean, which seems to be a reeally useful daily updated news aggregator covering most of the world. Not entirely sure where the people running it are coming from – there’s a paranoid flavour about some of the site – but the links to news are up to date and fascinating.
If you want a one page picture of what’s happening right now in the world, check it out.
Filed by billy at 2:40 pm under meta,politics,research,the world
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