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| Unique Visitors: 113 |
| Total Unique Visitors: 54007 |
| Visitors Out: 133 |
| Total Visitors Out: 133 |
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| History's Hangover: King Alcohol & The Prime Minister... |
| 2008-08-14 22:37:00 |
"For centuries, our ancestors unleashed the dogs of war under the influence of a fog of boozeThe conspiracy theorists were right all along – well, nearly. There was a single entity behind the course of Western history, a single force which has controlled the people and influenced the leaders and decision-makers for the past 12,000 years. This entity wasn’t a mysterious secret group – no Illuminati, no Knights Templar, and not even David Icke’s lizards get a look in.It was alcohol.Before the 19th century and the beginnings of a reliable and clean water supply, the Western world made its water safe by turning it into alcoholic drinks. The addition of ethyl alcohol to water kills many of the pathogens and thus, thr...
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| Patanjali: Conquering Sexual Indulgence In 8 Easy Steps... |
| 2008-08-09 20:53:00 |
"Simply abstaining from sex will not bring about "continence". For this state to be achieved, the following 8 forms of sexual indulgence must be conquered":THINKING OFTALKING ABOUTJOKINGLOOKING INTENTLYSECRET TALKRESOLVEATTEMPTEXECUTION-Patanjali ("Yogi Sutras." Scholars estimate that Patanjali lived some time between 400 B.C. and 200 A.D., though they are in disagreement about these dates. While the scholars debate the actual dates of Patanjali, oral tradition accounts for the apparent time differences by explaining that the name Patanjali is a surname, and is the name of a lineage and school of teachers, students, and sages, rather than being only one person. However, for convenience sake, Patanjali is spoken of as a single person, who might have been founder of the lineage. Although Pa...
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| Don Draper Calling... |
| 2008-08-07 04:04:00 |
"I am quietly waiting forthe catastrophe of my personalityto seem beautiful again,and interesting..."- Frank O' Hara ("Meditations In An Emergency," N. Y., Grove Press, 1957. Image: Business Card: Sterling Cooper Advertising, New York, NY 1960).
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| Meditation On Bloviators: The Unholy Three... |
| 2008-08-05 02:12:00 |
Hate-mongering against alleged “leftist 1960s terrorists” now fills the days of anti-Obama rage for the Rovian bloviator battalion. Bill Ayers and the Weathermen, the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, Baby Boom professors, social workers , etc, are front and center for the hateful blatherings of the usual GOP flunkies all cowering at the prospect of an African-American president.But there were, indeed, three 1960s terrorists whose murderous, planet-killing rampage continues to poison this nation. They tower above all others. Their names: William Westmoreland, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon.This unholy trinity killed outright more than 55,000 Americans and several million southeast Asians—most of them innocent civilians—while bomb...
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| François La Rochefoucauld: A Sinner's Rêverie... |
| 2008-08-03 02:09:00 |
"A woman often thinks she regrets the lover, when she only regrets the love”- François La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680: "François VI, also called le Prince de Marcillac, Duc de la Rochefoucauld. French classical author best known for his maximes, epigrams expressing a harsh or paradoxical truth in the briefest manner possible. La Rochefoucauld was a cynical observer of Louis XIV's court, who mostly saw selfishness, hypocrisy, and weakness in general in human behavior. In his pessimism La Rochefoucauld was very democratic - everybody is a sinner. His insights have influenced amongst others Lord Chesterfield, Thomas Hardy, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stendhal, and André Gide. Source: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/. Image: Jean-Jacques Henner: 1829-1905, "Rêverie " Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, 1904-05).
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| On Reason: Magic, Religion, Decency & Kindness... |
| 2008-07-26 23:21:00 |
"He had, in fact, got everything from the church and Sunday School, except, perhaps, any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason." -Sinclair Lewis ("Elmer Gantry", Novel: Chapter II-1, p. 34, 1927)."You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion.... Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough."-Aldous Huxley(1894–1963,“Amor Fati,” Texts and Pretexts, 1932. Image: Burt Lancaster from the Oscar winning film"Elmer Gantry", directed by Richard Brooks, 1960).
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| The McNews Hour: "And That's The Way It Is..." |
| 2008-07-23 00:49:00 |
The tentacle-like growth of clandestine advertising in American TV shows in the form of product placement has taken another controversial step with the introduction of McDonald's products into regional news programs.Several TV outlets have begun to sell the fast-food giant the right to place cups of its iced coffee on to the desks of news anchors as they present morning current affairs shows.Typical is Fox 5 News in Las Vegas, an affiliate of Rupert Murdoch's Fox television network. Two cups of coffee, their cubes of ice glinting in the studio lights, now daily stand before the channel's morning presenters. The presenters conspicuously do not drink from the cups, which is just as well - the cups contain a bogus fluid and fake ice to prevent the cubes melting.The New York Times has reported...
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| The News That's Not Fit To Print...Our Post-Literate World... |
| 2008-07-22 02:10:00 |
The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and public responsibility on the part of much of our entrepreneurial class and the intellectual poverty of our post-literate world, a world where information is conveyed primarily through rapidly moving images rather than print.We live under the happy illusion that we can transfer news-gathering to the Internet. News-gathering will continue to exist, as it does on this Web site and sites such as ProPublica and Slate, but these traditions now have to contend with a new, widespread and ideologically driven partisanship that dominates the dissemination of views and information, from Fox News to blogger screeds. The majority of bloggers and Inte...
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| You Say You Want A Revolution? We'd All Love To See The Plan... |
| 2008-07-20 16:32:00 |
Detroit, the once-proud capital of industrialization is now the paragon of de-industrialization and urban decay.“We are at a stage in human history that is as monumental as changing from a hunter/gatherer society to an agricultural society and from an agricultural society to and industrial society. Where we’re headed now will be different because we have exhausted planetary space and human space for us to continue to look at things through the Cartesian measurement of material things.” -Grace Lee Boggs, Ph.DIn other words, a new epoch is emerging that emphasizes relationships and communities more than the accumulation of things — and the counting of profits.A trip to Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, a mere 30 minutes from downtown Detroit, illustrates how ...
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| BushCorp: History Repeated...History Deleted... |
| 2008-07-17 13:30:00 |
After watching wholesale lots of the Bush administration’s most important e-mails go mysteriously missing, Congress is trying to legislate against any further damage to history. The secrecy-obsessed White House is, of course, threatening a veto — one more effort to deny Americans their rightful access to the TRUTH about how their leaders govern or misgovern.The House approved a measure last week that would require the National Archives to issue stronger standards for preserving e-mails and to aggressively inspect whether an administration is in compliance. The Archives needs spine stiffening. Congressional investigators found that its staff backed off from inspections of e-mail storage after the Bush administration took office.We fear we may never fin...
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| The Military Mind MEDUSA: Purification With A Whisper... |
| 2008-07-10 22:19:00 |
"A US company claims it is ready to build a microwave ray gun able to beam sounds directly into people's heads. Bankrolled by the US Military, the device – dubbed MEDUSA (Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio) – exploits the microwave audio effect, in which short microwave pulses rapidly heat tissue, causing a shockwave inside the skull that can be detected by the ears. A series of pulses can be transmitted to produce recognisable sounds.The device is aimed for military or crowd-control applications, but may have other uses.Lev Sadovnik of the Sierra Nevada Corporation in the US is working on the system, having started work on a US NAVY (Small Business Innovation Research or SBIR) contract.MEDUSA involves a microwa...
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| On Clowns & Coulrophobia: The Terror Of Bozo |
| 2008-07-06 00:30:00 |
"There is nothing laughable about a clown in the moonlight." -Lon Chaney, Sr.Coulrophobia is defined as an extreme fear of clowns. Coulrophobia was conceived during the 1990s and originates from the Greek words Koulon (limb) and Kolobathristes which translates as"one who goes on stilts." The central fear trigger is the clown's appearance which masks the identity of the wearer and suggests a hidden and/or potentially sinister personality.- VioletPlanet, Image: -Larry Harmon as Bozo The Clown (Mr. Harmon was one of a few Bozos but not the original. Bozo The Clown was created by Capitol Records executive Alan Livingston for recordings in 1946. The late Vance "Pinto" Colvig was the first person to play the clown and Bob Bozo Bell was one of the most popular...
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| Fritz Lang: Metropolis Rediscovered... |
| 2008-07-03 03:09:00 |
Last Tuesday Paula Félix-Didier traveled on a secret mission to Berlin in order to meet with three film experts. The museum director from Buenos Aires had something special in her luggage: a copy of a long version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, including scenes believed lost for almost 80 years. After examining the film the three experts are certain: The find from Buenos Aires is a real treasure, a worldwide sensation. Metropolis, the most important silent film in German history, can from this day on be considered to have been rediscovered.Fritz Lang presented the original version of Metropolis in Berlin in January 1927. The film is set in the futuristic city of Metropolis, ruled by Joh Fredersen, whose workers live underground. His son falls in love w...
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| In Space: The Presence of Divinity... |
| 2008-07-01 21:53:00 |
"The biggest joy was on the way home. In my cockpit window every 2 minutes I saw the earth, the moon, the sun and the whole 360 degree panorama of the heavens. It was a powerful overwhelming experience.Suddenly, I realized the molecules of my body and the molecules of the spacecraft and the molecules in the bodies of my partners were prototyped and manufactured in some ancient generation of stars. It was an overwhelming sense of oneness...a connectedness. It wasn't THEM and US. It was...That's me!...That's all of it! It's all one thing! This was accompanied by an ecstasy...a sense of "Oh My God!" Wow! Yes!...an insight...an epiphany. The presence of divinity became almost palpable, and I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident based...
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| Five Uncanny Predictions: Earth Before The Dawn Of 2001... |
| 2008-06-29 16:18:00 |
In December of 1900, John Elfreth Watkins, Jr. wrote: “These prophecies will seem strange, almost impossible. Yet, they have come from the most learned and conservative minds in America. To the wisest and most careful men in our greatest institutions of science and learning I have gone, asking each in his turn to forecast for me what, in his opinion, will have been wrought in his own field of investigation before the dawn of 2001 - a century from now. These opinions I have carefully transcribed:"Prediction #8: Aerial War-Ships and Forts on Wheels. Giant guns will shoot twenty-five miles or more, and will hurl anywhere within such a radius shells exploding and destroying whole cities. Such guns will be armed by aid of compasses when used on land or sea, and telescopes when directed from ...
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| Art From The Underground: Watching You 24/7... |
| 2008-06-24 19:10:00 |
"Anna Barriball's minimal typographic artwork 'About 60 Miles Of Beautiful Views.' is the latest commission by Art on the Underground to go on display on the Tube network.Barriball will display a collection of evocative phrases taken from the back of found photographs in a photo album. Printed in New Johnston font, the texts will be displayed on posters in advertising spaces across the network.Customers traveling on the Underground will encounter unexpected phrases like ''About 60 miles of beautiful views.' or 'On way to birthday party.' or 'Looking back the way we had come.'. These cryptic texts are loaded with personal memory, yet connect with individual reasons for travel and the millions of private thoughts customers carry with them on their journ...
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| Consuming Passions: The Age Of Heroic Consumption...The Tyranny of Money... |
| 2008-06-22 02:03:00 |
The age of heroic consumption is surely drawing to a close. The inspiration of those whose principal virtue is the money that permits them to lay claim to a disproportionate share of the earth’s resources is being by-passed in a world where a population of 9 billion must be accommodated by 2050.The price tag on the possessions of the wealthy — their 20 million dollar mansions, 5 million dollar yachts, extravagant couture and priceless jewels, their private jets and lives apart from the great majority of humankind — are rapidly losing their power to enchant the rest of us. In an age when scientists, humanitarians and moral leaders are exhorting human beings to look to our impact upon the earth — and not solely in relation to the carbon footprint — ...
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| Eyewitness To History: Crazy With Fear In San Francisco... |
| 2008-06-20 22:42:00 |
I had $600.00 in gold under my pillow. I awoke as I was thrown out of bed. Attempting to walk, the floor shook so that I fell. I grabbed my clothing and rushed down into the office, where dozens were already congregated. Suddenly the lights went out, and every one rushed for the door.Outside I witnessed a sight I never want to see again. It was dawn and light. I looked up. The air was filled with falling stones. People around me were crushed to death on all sides. All around the huge buildings were shaking and waving. Every moment there were reports like 100 cannons going off at one time. Then streams of fire would shoot out, and other reports followed.I asked a man standing next to me what happened. Before he could answer a thousand bricks fell on him and he was killed. A woman threw her ...
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| The News Media: NBC Furthering Fiction...NBC Furthering Lies=Propaganda 101 |
| 2008-06-18 00:55:00 |
"I think the questions were asked. I think we pushed. I think we prodded. I think we challenged the president. I think not only those of us in the White House press corps did that, but others in the rest of the landscape of the media did that. … The right questions were asked. I think there’s a lot of critics-and I guess we can count Scott McClellan as one-who think that, if we did not debate the president, debate the policy in our role as journalists, if we did not stand up and say, ‘This is bogus,’ and ‘You’re a liar,’ and ‘Why are you doing this?’ that we didn’t do our job. And I respectfully disagree. It’s not our role."That was NBC correspondent David Gregory, appearing on MSNBC’s “Hardball With Chris Matthews.” He was respo...
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| Gore Vidal: On Bush...The Courage To Sack Him.... |
| 2008-06-14 11:54:00 |
It will take the United States a century to recover from the damage wreaked by President George. W Bush, writer Gore Vidal said in an interview published on Saturday."The president behaved like a virtual criminal but we didn't have the courage to sack him for fear of violating the American constitution," Vidal told the El Mundo newspaper.The author, a trenchant critic of the US-led invasion of Iraq, said it would take the United States "100 years to repair the damage caused by Bush. We live in a dictatorship. We have a fascist government...which controls the media," Vidal also said presidential aspirant Barack Obama was "intelligent" adding that it would be a "novelty" to have an "intelligent" person in the White House. -Gore Vidal (El Mundo News, Spain 6...
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