As primary-election democracy unfolds, C.I.A. admits practicing torture

What a contrast in values: Even as millions of Americans made their way to polling stations today to exercise their right to vote (in primary elections to determine the major political parties' presidential candidates), in Washington, the C.I.A.'s director, General Michael Hayden was telling the Senate's intelligence committee that the spy agency indeed had practiced the torture technique known as "waterboarding" in the recent past. (As Musharrafesque as it may sound or appear, Hayden is both an active U.S. Air Force officer and the head of a government unit that describes itself as "an independent agency." He showed up before the Senate's committee wearing his military uniform.)

Kevin Wolf/AP

C.I.A. Director Michael Hayden, a U.S. Air Force general, appeared before the Senate's intelligence committee today; he admitted that the agency had practiced the "waterboarding" torture method

Hayden told the congressional body that, in 2002 and 2003, the C.I.A. had waterboarded al-Qaeda suspects Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (the assumed mastermind of the September 2001 attacks), Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The intelligence-agency chief said: "We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time....There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about al-Qaeda and its workings. Those two realities have changed." (Guardian)

Over time, so have the circumstances and the effects of George W. Bush's aimless "war on terror"; its egregious disregard for the rule of law as it has conflated fighting terrorism with cheerleading for what Bush has called "liberty" has made it possible and perhaps even likely that, if or when terrorists ever happen to get their hands on any American military personnel or civilians, they might, could or will torture them, too.

Agence France Presse reports that "Hayden's remarks were the first direct, official admission that [C.I.A.] interrogators had used 'waterboarding' in questioning 'war on terror' detainees. They came amid a long-running battle between the [Bush] administration and members of Congress over so-called enhanced or coercive interrogation techniques used by the C.I.A. Attorney General Michael Mukasey told Congress last week that the C.I.A. no longer uses 'waterboarding' and that it was not 'currently' an authorized interrogation technique." He refused to say whether or not waterboarding is or should be considered a form of torture.

In his testimony today, Hayden defended the C.I.A.'s habit of making up its own rules. The spy agency head said it "would make no more sense to apply the Army Field Manual to [the] C.I.A. - the Army Field Manual on interrogations - than it would be to take the Army Field Manual on grooming and apply it to my agency, or the Army Field Manual on recruiting and apply it to my agency, or, for that matter, take the Army Field Manual on sexual orientation and apply it to my agency."

AP

Hayden said al-Qaeda suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - the assumed mastermind of the September 2001 attacks - was one of the detainees who had been tortured

In an op-ed piece in Le Monde, indirectly alluding to trends in the behavior of the U.S. government, its agencies and official representatives, commentator Daniel Vernet notes that all of the leading candidates who are now slugging it out to become the next American president have made leadership a central theme of their campaigns. Vernet points out that Democratic candidate Barack Obama has said that the United States "must lead the world by its acts and by its example." (Translation: Supposedly that kind of thinking would rule out any place for torture in the activities of any U.S.-government agency - depending, of course, on who's really in charge of such agencies.)

Posted By: Edward M. Gomez (Email) | February 05 2008 at 01:20 PM

The Psychedelic Salon

This is a website I came accross today in search of more information about Terence McKenna. I have not had a chance to listen to any of the stuff on this website, but I really enjoyed the few McKenna lectures I've had for the last 2 years but have never bothered to listen to until yesterday. He has some very controversial, interesting and downright outrageous theories about the universe and the way we came to be. I think it fascinating. I feel like an infant in this subject, but i find that thinking about reality in this manner makes me very anxious and excited about something that is too big to put in words...i feel as though something really big is coming. (this is not a 2012 post, although i have no doubt there are many talks about that in the salon) The economy sucks. okay, that sucks, awesome, so... The entire world, including everyone in our own country, has become more and more outraged at what George W. Bush has been doing (and, unfortunately is still doing) over the last 8 years with our country. actually, this whole crisis is probably a great thing because now, we can all make sure that this never happens again. that kind of behavior is no longer acceptable. more importantly, not sustainable. anyway, check out this website for some audio by some interesting folks and if it ends up being no good, at least there's funny pictures

caucus

Obama won in Colorado by a 67% to 32% margin over clinton.... HOLLA

it was cause rod smith was down with him

Classic Hip Hop Albums

I know some of you are haters so you don't have to explore this link if you don't want to.  For all of you hip hop lovers, this blahg has a ton of classic albums. Hopefully this will continue to be updated because there could be much more added to this already great list of full discs, free...I had fun downloading album after album, maybe you will to! 

Shred.Something.Kid

From Super Bowl to Super Tuesday

FBI wants palm prints, eye scans, tattoo mapping

CLARKSBURG, West Virginia (CNN) -- The FBI is gearing up to create a massive computer database of people's physical characteristics, all part of an effort the bureau says to better identify criminals and terrorists.

But it's an issue that raises major privacy concerns -- what one civil liberties expert says should concern all Americans.

The bureau is expected to announce in coming days the awarding of a $1 billion, 10-year contract to help create the database that will compile an array of biometric information -- from palm prints to eye scans.

Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI's Biometric Services section chief, said adding to the database is "important to protect the borders to keep the terrorists out, protect our citizens, our neighbors, our children so they can have good jobs, and have a safe country to live in."

But it's unnerving to privacy experts.

"It's the beginning of the surveillance society where you can be tracked anywhere, any time and all your movements, and eventually all your activities will be tracked and noted and correlated," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Technology and Liberty Project.

The FBI already has 55 million sets of fingerprints on file. In coming years, the bureau wants to compare palm prints, scars and tattoos, iris eye patterns, and facial shapes. The idea is to combine various pieces of biometric information to positively identify a potential suspect.

A lot will depend on how quickly technology is perfected, according to Thomas Bush, the FBI official in charge of the Clarksburg, West Virginia, facility where the FBI houses its current fingerprint database.

"Fingerprints will still be the big player," Bush, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, told CNN.

But he added, "Whatever the biometric that comes down the road, we need to be able to plug that in and play."

First up, he said, are palm prints. The FBI has already begun collecting images and hopes to soon use these as an additional means of making identifications. Countries that are already using such images find 20 percent of their positive matches come from latent palm prints left at crime scenes, the FBI's Bush said.

The FBI has also started collecting mug shots and pictures of scars and tattoos. These images are being stored for now as the technology is fine-tuned. All of the FBI's biometric data is stored on computers 30-feet underground in the Clarksburg facility.

In addition, the FBI could soon start comparing people's eyes -- specifically the iris, or the colored part of an eye -- as part of its new biometrics program called Next Generation Identification.

Nearby, at West Virginia University's Center for Identification Technology Research, researchers are already testing some of these technologies that will ultimately be used by the FBI.

"The best increase in accuracy will come from fusing different biometrics together," said Bojan Cukic, the co-director of the center.

But while law enforcement officials are excited about the possibilities of these new technologies, privacy advocates are upset the FBI will be collecting so much personal information.

"People who don't think mistakes are going to be made I don't think fly enough," said Steinhardt.

He said thousands of mistakes have been made with the use of the so-called no-fly lists at airports -- and that giving law enforcement widespread data collection techniques should cause major privacy alarms.

"There are real consequences to people," Steinhardt said.

You don't have to be a criminal or a terrorist to be checked against the database. More than 55 percent of the checks the FBI runs involve criminal background checks for people applying for sensitive jobs in government or jobs working with vulnerable people such as children and the elderly, according to the FBI.

The FBI says it hasn't been saving the fingerprints for those checks, but that may change. The FBI plans a so-called "rap-back" service in which an employer could ask the FBI to keep the prints for an employee on file and let the employer know if the person ever has a brush with the law. The FBI says it will first have to clear hurdles with state privacy laws, and people would have to sign waivers allowing their information to be kept.

Critics say people are being forced to give up too much personal information. But Lawrence Hornak, the co-director of the research center at West Virginia University, said it could actually enhance people's privacy.

"It allows you to project your identity as being you," said Hornak. "And it allows people to avoid identity theft, things of that nature."

There remains the question of how reliable these new biometric technologies will be. A 2006 German study looking at facial recognition in a crowded train station found successful matches could be made 60 percent of the time during the day. But when lighting conditions worsened at night, the results shrank to a success rate of 10 to 20 percent.

As work on these technologies continues, researchers are quick to admit what's proven to be the most accurate so far. "Iris technology is perceived today, together with fingerprints, to be the most accurate," said Cukic.

But in the future all kinds of methods may be employed. Some researchers are looking at the way people walk as a possible additional means of identification.

The FBI says it will protect all this personal data and only collect information on criminals and those seeking sensitive jobs.

The ACLU's Steinhardt doesn't believe it will stop there.

"This had started out being a program to track or identify criminals," he said. "Now we're talking about large swaths of the population -- workers, volunteers in youth programs. Eventually, it's going to be everybody."

woa bro

^gives "heady crystal" a whole new meaning...

-courtesy of danimal

Banksy!

http://home.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/echelon.html

No they dont make them with flowers anymore

Shaping the Lotus Sutra

Now, Sâriputra, that man, on seeing the house from every side wrapt in a blaze by a great mass of fire, got afraid, frightened, anxious in his mind, and made the following reflection: I myself am able to come out from the burning house through the door, quickly and safely, without being touched or scorched by that great mass of fire; but my children, those young boys, are staying in the burning house, playing, amusing, and diverting themselves with all sorts of sports. They do not perceive, nor know, nor understand, nor mind that the house is on fire, and do not get afraid. Though scorched by that great mass of fire, and affected with such a mass of pain, they do not mind the pain, nor do they conceive the idea of escaping.





Note: this is not meant to mean one thing or another...merely show an interesting parallel...it is especially not meant to say anything about the united states in particular, its not meant to be understood that concretely...the idea of the burning house is the beginning of the lotus sutra, one of buddhism's most popular texts...it is also displayed in its artwork through burning cities.....they also have a very vague understanding of space and time....

Conscious Alliance Service Learning Project

And a little something coming from Justin Baker...

The Lifted Lorax by The Man

I hope you all enjoi reading this little story. I have no doubt that you've read it, or had it read to you before, but who doesn't love a little Seuss now and again?

French police deal blow to Microsoft

Hey, so the French government is down to say goodbye to Microsoft in favor of an open source free OS...how long till everything is open source and free?

Just a Ride

The Perfect High by Shel Silverstein

There once was a boy named Gimme-Some-Roy... He was nothin' like me or you,
'cause laying back and getting high was all he cared to do.

As a kid, he sat in the cellar...sniffing airplane glue. And then he smoked banana peels, when that was the thing to do. He tried aspirin in Coca-Cola, he breathed helium on the sly, and his life became an endless search to find the perfect high.

But grass just made him wanna lay back and eat chocolate-chip pizza all night,
and the great things he wrote when he was stoned looked like shit in the morning light.
Speed made him wanna rap all day, reds laid him too far back, Cocaine-Rose was sweet to his nose, but the price nearly broke his back.

He tried PCP, he tried THC, but they never quite did the trick. Poppers nearly blew his heart, mushrooms made him sick. Acid made him see the light, but he couldn't remember it long. Hash was a little too weak, and smack was a lot too strong. Quaaludes made him stumble, booze just made him cry, Then he heard of a cat named Baba Fats who knew of the perfect high.

Now, Baba Fats was a hermit cat...lived high up in Nepal, High on a craggy mountain top, up a sheer and icy wall. "Well, hell!" says Roy, "I'm a healthy boy, and I'll crawl or climb or fly,
Till I find that guru who'll give me the clue as to what's the perfect high."

So out and off goes Gimme-Some-Roy, to the land that knows no time, Up a trail no man could conquer, to a cliff no man could climb. For fourteen years he climbed that cliff...back down again he'd slide . . .
He'd sit and cry, then climb some more, pursuing the perfect high.

Grinding his teeth, coughing blood, aching and shaking and weak, Starving and sore, bleeding and tore, he reaches the mountain peak. And his eyes blink red like a snow-blind wolf, and he snarls the snarl of a rat,
As there in repose, and wearing no clothes, sits the god-like Baba Fats.

"What's happenin', Fats?" says Roy with joy, "I've come to state my biz . . .
I hear you're hip to the perfect trip... Please tell me what it is. "For you can see," says Roy to he, "I'm about to die, So for my last ride, tell me, how can I achieve the perfect high?"

"Well, dog my cats!" says Baba Fats. "Another burned out soul, Who's lookin' for an alchemist to turn his trip to gold. It isn't in a dealer's stash, or on a druggist's shelf... Son, if you would find the perfect high, find it in yourself."

"Why, you jive mother-fucker!" says Roy, "I climbed through rain and sleet,
I froze three fingers off my hands, and four toes off my feet! I braved the lair of the polar bear, I've tasted the maggot's kiss. Now, you tell me the high is in myself? What kinda shit is this?

My ears, before they froze off," says Roy, "had heard all kindsa crap; But I didn't climb for fourteen years to hear your sophomore rap. And I didn't climb up here to hear that the high is on the natch, So you tell me where the real stuff is, or I'll kill your guru ass!"

"Okay...okay," says Baba Fats, "You're forcin' it outta me... There is a land beyond the sun that's known as Zabolee. A wretched land of stone and sand, where snakes and buzzards scream, And in this devil's garden blooms the mystic Tzutzu tree.

Now, once every ten years it blooms one flower, as white as the Key West sky,
And he who eats of the Tzutzu flower shall know the perfect high. For the rush comes on like a tidal wave...hits like the blazin' sun. And the high? It lasts forever, and the down don't never come.

But, Zabolee Land is ruled by a giant, who stands twelve cubits high, And with eyes of red in his hundred heads, he awaits the passer-by. And you must slay the red-eyed giant, and swim the river of slime, Where the mucous beasts await to feast on those who journey by. And if you slay the giant and beasts, and swim the slimy sea, There's a blood-drinking witch who sharpens her teeth as she guards the Tzutzu tree."

"Well, to hell with your witches and giants," says Roy, "To hell with the beasts of the sea--
Why, as long as the Tzutzu flower still blooms, hope still blooms for me."
And with tears of joy in his sun-blind eyes, he slips the guru a five, And crawls back down the mountainside, pursuing the perfect high. "Well, that is that," says Baba Fats, sitting back down on his stone, Facing another thousand years of talking to God, alone. "Yes, Lord, it's always the same...old men or bright-eyed youth... It's always easier to sell 'em some shit than it is to tell them the truth."

Bush sends Congress $3.1 trillion budget

On Killing Wooly Mamoths

If I had a nickel for every time I have been talking to some guy or girl about their new romantic interest or their new little electronic toy, I would be, well, rich. When confronted by these mind-numbing situations, I, probably like most people, rarely care

But here we find ourselves, drawling on and on about some bit of mindless minutiae we would never say into a mirror. Don’t get me wrong, I will be the first to admit that I do this all of the time. My point is not that we should refrain from discussing Gary’s enlarged testicle, or Stacie’s fashionable snow booties; my point is that we have an outrageous and exceptional ability to talk about nothing.

Why would this be? One would think that our ancestors would have killed each other off, for the sake of sanity if nothing else. Indeed, how have we survived long enough to build even more little pieces of bling to show off? Is it to entice the other sex (I always did find talking about those booties somewhat sexy), or perhaps is it to explain away an uncomfortable and iniquitous testicle? “Nothing,” if it is that at all, takes up the majority of our conversation.

Some have postulated that we do this because our ancestors were actively engaged in building close-knit communities. This makes sense to me (I do not know about you, but I too would like to have a wingman on that whole wooly mammoth problem). Our ancestral contemporaries, those somewhat brusque and furry-bowed gentlemen and ladies, were mostly keep-to-themselves types. We probably won out mostly because we came up with cool little bits of technology. Or perhaps we were more competitive, not because each individual came up with cool shit, but because we could talk about our cool shit (even when it is not so cool). Imagine, Grandpa Erg probably discussed what kind of bone needle Ug used on his fur-lined mammoth-skin snow booties…and was bored out of his mind.

But this process has evolved; we are ever more able to convey ideas to one another. We have moved on to more complex matters. As we have become increasingly social, we have become increasingly interested in how we fit in with the ‘guys and gals.’ Conversation serves a new use; it can be a barometer for what other people think of you. Often when people are showing off their new car, they are not just reveling in their new status symbol; they are looking for approval from the group. They are making sure you will still come along on the mammoth hunt, or even whether the car will help out with getting your booties off after a mammoth-steak dinner. Think of that next time you feel compelled to tell me about how many inches you lifted your jeep.

Another goal of seemingly useless drivel is our search for empathy. Words have still not caught up to the complexity of the emotions we all feel. Pain, love, hate, and envy are all boiling within every individual, and most people cannot always put words to the whirlwind. But, as we can see from the fact that we depend on the approval others, it is a good thing to understand where big-bad Ug is coming from when he breaks down in tears. An existential crisis makes for awful spear throwing.

This is still a work in process. Most people are not great at expressing emotion, and probably, neither were our ancestors. This might have been the reason cave painting was all the rage for a while. Aside from showing off your adept hand at a charcoal wildebeest, it was a way to express what you thought about that day. If you felt proud in your exploits making a new kind of knife, you could express it to others, and hopefully cave-painting critics would affirm your work. Many people today feel the urge to write poetry or paint a masterpiece as a way to express what cannot always be put into everyday language. Children are genetically predisposed to express their genius in Spaghetti-Os. Our ability to build communities through communication is stronger than ever.

A few philosophers and their nerdy friends have been discussing this concept for a while, namely, the way that we look at the world through language. Wittgenstein and Chomsky (who would probably prefer to be called a linguist…which is why he is a nerd) have talked a great deal about the importance of language and communication. Some argue that people are born with inherent tendency towards language; that we are evolutionarily patterned into thinking of the world in terms of words. Wittgenstein pointed out that we describe events and thoughts in words even to ourselves, and that language is an intractable part of the fabric of life. While these individuals would probably frown upon my cavalier use of their ideas, this could mean that talking to one another, even about nothing, has been selected for by evolution. That inane babble you cannot stand is a normal human trait, we were born to talk.

Music is another example. Advertisers are all too happy to painfully lodge their little jingle in your brain at every turn. My Chemical Romance lyrics may plague you for the rest of your life. One of the reasons we cannot forget these catchy little rhymes is probably that our ancestors used music and rhyme to remember important things, and pass them on to Ug junior. How many of us remember the quadratic formula from that stupid song Mrs. Finckle drilled into your skull during High School? (Not that I do, but I hear some people paid attention). While we may not use the medium in the same way (car salesmen are a somewhat new addition) we retain the abilities that our antecessors evolved to build communities.

One could say that this article is completely inapplicable to the real world, which I admit, is probably true. I doubt I will care next time that a really annoying freckle on the back of Gary’s arm comes up in conversation. In the very least however, we should be aware of the motivations we have; and perhaps you may even have more sympathy for those regaling you with their latest news. In reality, they are just keeping alive a long and boring tradition.

Frozen in time (not David Blain... err, i mean Jesus)

Keep On Plugging

NASA on Monday will broadcast the Beatles' song "Across the Universe" across the galaxy to Polaris, the North Star.

"Send my love to the aliens," Paul McCartney told NASA through a Beatles historian. "All the best, Paul."

The song, written by McCartney and John Lennon, may have a ticket to ride and will be flying at the speed of light. But it will take 431 years along a long and winding road to reach its final destination. That's because Polaris is 2.5 quadrillion miles away.

NASA loaded an MP3 of the song, just under four minutes in its original version, and will transmit it digitally at 7 p.m. EST Monday from its giant antenna in Madrid, Spain. But if you wanted to hear it on Polaris, you would need an antenna and a receiver to convert it back to music, the same way people receive satellite television.

Talismanic Art Show, Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, NYC

Extreme Breakdancing

Obama Controversies

Via NYT:

By MIKE McINTIRE

Published: February 3, 2008

When residents in Illinois voiced outrage two years ago upon learning that the Exelon Corporation had not disclosed radioactive leaks at one of its nuclear plants, the state’s freshman senator, Barack Obama, took up their cause.

Carlos Javier Sanchez/Bloomberg News

John W. Rowe, chairman of Exelon and also of the Nuclear Energy Institute, a lobbying group, has been an Obama donor.

Mr. Obama scolded Exelon and federal regulators for inaction and introduced a bill to require all plant owners to notify state and local authorities immediately of even small leaks. He has boasted of it on the campaign trail, telling a crowd in Iowa in December that it was “the only nuclear legislation that I’ve passed.”

“I just did that last year,” he said, to murmurs of approval.

A close look at the path his legislation took tells a very different story. While he initially fought to advance his bill, even holding up a presidential nomination to try to force a hearing on it, Mr. Obama eventually rewrote it to reflect changes sought by Senate Republicans, Exelon and nuclear regulators. The new bill removed language mandating prompt reporting and simply offered guidance to regulators, whom it charged with addressing the issue of unreported leaks.

Those revisions propelled the bill through a crucial committee. But, contrary to Mr. Obama’s comments in Iowa, it ultimately died amid parliamentary wrangling in the full Senate.

“Senator Obama’s staff was sending us copies of the bill to review, and we could see it weakening with each successive draft,” said Joe Cosgrove, a park district director in Will County, Ill., where low-level radioactive runoff had turned up in groundwater. “The teeth were just taken out of it.”

bisCO, STS9 SBDs

boulder
fillmore
aggie
STS9 Fri, Sat
vail still hasn't been released

much love

Phil and Bob Bury Hatchet for Barack 08!!!!!!!!!!!

Phil Lesh along with Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Jackie Greene, John Molo and Steve Molitz will play a Super Tuesday Eve show in support of Barack Obama at San Francisco's legendary Warfield Theatre on Monday February 4. Tickets for the rare reunion of the members of the Grateful Dead will go on sale at 5 p.m. Pacific time through Ticketmaster. In the spirit of fair access to tickets for fans, this event is a "WILL CALL ONLY" event. Tickets are only $35.00.

The video website Iclips will be producing a live simulcast streamed via the Internet on www.iclips.net at approximately 7:30 p.m. PST.

This will mark the first time that the members of The Grateful Dead have performed together since 2004. They have agreed to reunite for this one-time-only event in order to lend support to Senator Obama leading into the crucial "Super Tuesday" series of primaries held on Tuesday, February 5.

Good Links

US No Longer Hegemon - NYT

Obama in Denver

Sentenced to Death

a student in Afghanistan was sentenced to death by a religious court after reading and distributing literature on women's rights with the intention of starting a debate at his university. the ruling was confirmied by the senate recently and is expected to handed down shortly. there is a grand amount of backstory to the issue at the Independant.

this action comes six years after the overthrow of the Taliban and years since the US instated "democracy" in the nation. this predicament highlights the growing tensions between islamic nations and "democratic" western pressure.

there is a link to a petition to sign at the bottom of the full story on the Independent... there is still hope that international pressure can lead to resolving this matter.

or the US could just wage a war there.... oh wait... shit

Organic Volunteers

http://www.organicvolunteers.com/index.asp

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

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

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/12/are-there-reall.html

Rudy No More!

Good bye and good riddance, I say.

Playing the Political Stock Market

So the business school at the university of iowa has created a "futures market" (operated just like a stock market) based on the outcomes/standings of political events/players. It is a real-money market that is open to the general public and operated by faculty at the university of iowa.... so basically you can buy stock for candidates at prices based on their current ratings...
heres some DEM market quotes (in dollars) as of 6PM CST today:
clinton .628
edwards .012
obama .383

just thought it was interesting.....

CONGRESS PASSES 2008 DEFENSE SPENDING BILL

Excerpt from larger article I can't link to...

CRITICAL DEFENSE RESEARCH

$1.6 million for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). This funding will develop unique operational concepts for unmanned aerial systems to meet the demands for both military and civilian applicants.

$3.2 million to continue the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), which examines the properties and behaviors of the ionosphere. Research will enhance military and civilian communications and surveillance systems.

$4 million to Arctic Regional Supercomputer located at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. This funding will enhance research into high-performance computational science and machine/human interactions.

$1.6 million to the University of Alaska for purchasing automotive research equipment. Funding will assist the Army by providing equipment needed to measure the performance, energy consumption, and safety of military vehicles.

$1.6 million to hibernation genomics projects at the University of Alaska. These studies will help develop new models for preventing and treating trauma from injury and ischemia for battlefield conditions.

$20 million to the Expeditionary Craft to support an Office of Naval Research effort to construct a vehicle to demonstrate advanced transport technologies.

$1.6 million for the University of Alaska to study technologies for reala"time identification of airborne threats in the form of chemical, radiological and biological compounds...

The rest of the stuff is rather interesting, but notice the red...This is what a recent RS article was delving into...really interesting stuff, worth looking into so you don't hear it from someone's who's eyes are too dialated, untz untz...like the new posts

Stanford Prison Experiment

I saw a video in class on this the other day. Pretty interesting and crazy study that got pretty out of hand. Have a look.

The Beholder's Eye

From a book about perception called "A Natural History of the Senses":

"Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret: You are looking into a predator's eyes. Most predators have eyes set right on the front of thier heads, so they can use binocular vision to sight and track their prey. Our eyes have separate mechanisms that agther light, pick out an important or novel image, focus on it precisely, pinpoint it in space, and follow it... Prey, on the other hand, have eyes at the sides of their heads, because what they really need is peripheral vision, so they can tell when something is sneaking up behind them. Something like us....

Though most of us don't hunt, our eyes are still the monopoly of our senses. To taste or touch your enemy or your food, you have to be unnervingly close to it. To smell or hear it, you can risk being farther off. But vision can rush through the feilds and up the mountains, travel across time, country, and parsecs of outer space, and collect bushel baskets of information as it goes...

The process of seeing began very simply. In ancient seas, life-forms developed faint patches of skin that were sensitive to light. They could then tell light from dark, and also the direction of the light source, but that was all. These skills turned out to be so useful that eyes evolved that could judge motion, then form, and finally a dazzling array of details and colors. One reminder of our oceanic origins is that our eyes must constantly be bathed in salt water...

We think of our eyes as wise seers, but all the eye does is gather light.... The iris of the eye, which is really a muscle, changes the size of a small hole, the pupil, through which light enters the eyeball... In addition to its gate-keeping function, the iris is what gives our eyes their color. Caucasian eyes appear blue at birth, Negro eyes brown. After death, Caucasian eyes appear greenish-brown. Blue eyes are not inherently blue, not stained blue like fabric. They appear blue because they have less pigment than brown eyes. When light enters "blue" eyes, the very short blue light rays scatter as they jump off tiny, nonpigmented particles; what we see are the scattered rays, and the eyes appear to be blue. Dark eyes have densely packed pigment molecules and absorb the blue wavelengths, at the same time refelcting other colors whose rays are longer. They therfore appear to be brown or hazel. Though on casual inspection irises may look pretty much the same, the pattern of color, starbursts, spots, and other features is so highly individual that law-enforcement people have considered using iris patterns in addition to fingerprints...."

Emmanuelle Chriqui

You may know her from HBO's Entourage. She makes me believe that there is a God, and he's a man! Just give me one hour... no, make that a half hour... wait no, one minute will do just fine!

sharing beauty

Changing Channels

this article really spoke to me the other day when i stumbled upon it. in a somewhat basic way at times, the article address many of the thoughts, ideas and issues surrounding a shift in consciousness via many vehicles. while it is a somewhat short discourse, it really includes a lot of information to build from....

"With higher frequencies permeating the entire body-mind system, the carrier wave permits a higher density of information to be perceived. New layers of reality unfold, the imagination realizes its true creative potential and the harmonic hologram of life performs another exquisite symphony. The Spirit waits expectantly."

check it if you wish:
Changing Channels: Tuning into the REAL world

smile

Chickipedia

federal budget

this is a great visual/graphical representation of how the federal budget has been planned for the upcoming fiscal year. this spending plan is the one that the president proposed and is under debate in congress right now. it also includes the percent change from last years budget numbers...

yikes!!
there is a built in deficit of $239 billion

sorry EPA and higher ed, there is a war ya know...

DEATH and TAXES 2008

Hooray!

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/01/25/bluetooth.legs/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Anonymous War On Scientology

"The Internet-based group "Anonymous" has released statements on YouTube and via a press release, outlining what they call a "War on Scientology". Church of Scientology related websites, such as religiousfreedomwatch.org have been removed due to a suspected distributed denial-of-service-attack (DDoS) by a group calling themselves "Anonymous". On Friday, the same group allegedly brought down Scientology's main website, scientology.org, which was available sporadically throughout the weekend. Several websites relating to the Church of Scientology have been slowed down, brought to a complete halt or seemingly removed from the Internet completely in an attack which seems to be continuous. The scientology.org site was back online briefly on Monday, and is currently loading slowly.

On Monday, the group released a video titled: "Message to Scientology" on YouTube concerning their intentions to attack the Church of Scientology. A robotic voice on the video begins with "Hello leaders of Scientology. We are Anonymous," and continues by explaining their motivations: "Over the years we have been watching you, your campaigns of misinformation, your suppression of dissent and your litigious nature. All of these things have caught our eye. With the leakage of your latest propaganda video into mainstream circulation the extent of your malign influence over those who have come to trust you as leaders has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided that your organisation should be destroyed." The message goes on to state that the group intends to "expel Scientology from the Internet". As of Wednesday, the video had been viewed 370,347 times, favorited 2,473 times, and is currently YouTube's top third video of the day..." -wiki




During the hack of the scientology website some sensitive documents were leaked.....ones that devotees pay thousands of dollars to see. Download them here if you wish. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.....

love love

Hello friends

This is my first post, hooray! I finally have something worthwhile to add. I hope this works- this is an interview with author Paul Levy. I would try to explain what it's about, but I wouldn't do it justice. Let's just say it's a fascinating mix of Jungian psychology, synchronicity, reality as a collective dream, spiritual awakening and madness, apacolypse, and how George Bush fits into all of this. I strongly suggest giving it a listen. Okay have fun! Yay! :)

http://www.redicecreations.com/radio/2007/01jan/RICR-070125-plevy.mp3

i will live forever as a memory on the internet

800 years of life:
researchers at USC have extended the life of yeast by 10 times. by using a similar gene manipulation, and a diet, they have begun to test a life extension plan on people in Ecuador.

"you know my father was in the tuskegee experiments..."

goodbye

the time has finally come for me to venture off to the southern hemisphere...(if you were ever wondering why it's called a hemisphere you should talk to my friend griff)
anyway I'd love to stay in touch with you all while I am gone so if you'd leave me your e-mail address that'd be great
love you
see you in a few months!

I Like Lou Dobbs

Two recent articles that made me feel so...


Our leaders have squandered our wealth

NEW YORK (CNN) -- President Bush's assurances that we'll all be "just fine" if he and Congress can work out an economic stimulus package seem a little hollow this morning.

Much like Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke's assurances last May that the subprime mortgage meltdown would be contained and not affect the broader economy. And it seems Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has spent most of the past year trying to influence Chinese economic policy rather than setting the direction of U.S. economic policy.

There is no question that Bush, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will quickly come up with an economic stimulus package simply because they can no longer ignore our economic and financial crisis. That economic stimulus plan will amount to about 1 percent of our nation's gross domestic product, an estimated $150 billion.

But all of us should recognize that the stimulus package will be inadequate to drive sustainable growth in our $13 trillion economy. An emergency Fed rate cut and an economic stimulus plan are short-term responses to our complex economic problems, nothing more than bandages for a hemorrhaging economy.

Bush, Pelosi, Reid and the presidential candidates of both parties have an opportunity now, and I believe an obligation, to adjust the public policy mistakes of the past quarter-century that have led to this crisis. And only through courageous policy decisions will we be able to steer this nation's economy away from the brink of outright disaster.

We all have to acknowledge that our problems were in part brought on by the failure of our government to regulate the institutions and markets that are now in crisis. The irresponsible fiscal policies of the past decade have led to a national debt that amounts to $9 trillion. The irresponsible so-called free trade policies of Democratic and Republican administrations over the past three decades have produced a trade debt that now amounts to more than $6 trillion, and that debt is rising faster than our national debt. All of which is contributing to the plunge in the value of the U.S. dollar.

At precisely the point in our history in which this nation has become ever more dependent on foreign producers for everything from clothing to computers to technology to energy, our weakened dollar is making the price of an ever-increasing number of imported goods even more expensive.

All Americans will soon have to face a bitter and now obvious truth: Our national, political and economic leaders have squandered this nation's wealth, and the price of this profligacy is enormous, and the bill has just come due for all of us.

Bernanke endorsed the concept of a short-term economic stimulus package, but he cautioned that the money must be spent correctly: "You'd hope that [consumers] would spend it on things that are domestically produced so that the spending power doesn't go elsewhere."

Just what would you have us spend it on? The truth is that consumers spend most of their money on foreign imports, and any stimulus package probably would be stimulating foreign economies rather than our own. Imports, for example, account for 92 percent of our non-athletic footwear, 92 percent of audio video equipment, 89 percent of our luggage and 73 percent of power tools. In fact, between 1997 and 2006, only five of the 114 industries examined in a U.S. Business and Industry Council report gained market share against import competition.

And let's be honest and straightforward, as I hope our president and the candidates for president will be: This stimulus will not prevent a recession. It may ease the pain for millions of Americans, but a recession we will have. The question is how deep, how prolonged and how painful will it be. Unfortunately, we're about to find out how committed and capable our national leaders are at mitigating that pain and producing realistic policy decisions for this nation that now stands at the brink.




Campaign a lot of partisan nonsense

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Remember how excited everybody was just a short while ago that this presidential campaign was the first in 80 years to be wide open, without a president or vice president in the campaign?

Remember how excited we all were that American presidential politics had matured to the point that a woman and a black man were winning primary and caucus votes that allowed both to claim front-runner status?

Now Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are ensnared in petty racial and gender politics and that does neither of them credit.

But at least the ugly spectacle that Clinton and Obama created should serve as a reminder to all of us that group and identity politics have outlived their effectiveness and that pandering to socio-ethnocentric interest groups and special interests, whether as large as corporate America or as small as the construction company in a congressman's district, has no rightful place in 21st century American politics.

The Democratic and Republican candidates for president have done hardly better than President Bush and the Democratic-led Congress on the issue of the war in Iraq. The candidates trip over one another to bring more of our troops home faster than the other candidates, or refusing to withdraw our troops from Iraq until the job is done; policy choices not dissimilar to the simplistic White House's false choices in either staying the course or cutting and running.

But these presidential candidates, both Republican and Democrat, obviously would prefer not to discuss the war in Iraq in their campaigns, nor to state clearly whether they would secure our borders and ports as an absolute first condition before taking up the issue of immigration reform.

Both parties and nearly all of their candidates continue to drive false choices for the illegal immigration debate as well. The centrist and appropriate policy response to this crisis is to secure our borders and ports, and enforce current immigration laws.

Now that the economy has become the number-one issue for primary voters of both parties, we can expect the candidates to come up with new economic programs that will solve every problem in our society. Economic stimulus packages will soon be the order of the day, with more false choices: The Democrats will offer handouts to every man, woman and child and the Republicans will give drastic tax breaks to large corporations and the wealthy as the panacea for what ails us.

These candidates will not have addressed the causes of our economic malaise: The critical issue of the faith-based free trade policies of the past decade that have been devastating to working men and women and their families, policies that have enlarged our trade debt to more than $6 trillion.

And while presidential candidates of both political parties talk about our public education system in terms of globalism and American competitiveness, they fail to recognize the crisis in our public schools and they fail to prescribe urgently needed solutions.

This partisan nonsense and predictable platitudes of this presidential campaign does not augur well for the nation, and I fear none of the candidates of either party is capable of extricating us from the mess their partisan politics have created.

myspace is sooo cool!!

shinerzzz

ouch

is there anything we have a grip on?

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/business/stories/2008/01/22/Fed_InterestRates_0122.html

SOMEBODY DOZEME!!!!!

CORN!!!!

Corn is everywhere in the US. it makes up the bulk of our farming, is used in food, as food, as fuel, is animal feed and is always over produced and over-subsidised by our government. why so much corn?

high-fructose corn syrup is bad news and is everywhere....

this is a nice article giving some basics about corn and processed foods


biscuits...

LATEnight I Think i Saw a KiD With One Of tHese IN LRG

:LKJ:LKJ:LKJ:LKJDKLDKLDJLKDLJK:

YES YES YES
4 Sets 0 stops true biscuits shrominate
GUMBO

01/16/08 Aggie Theater, Fort Collins, CO

I: Jigsaw Earth> And The Ladies Were The Rest Of The Night1> The Great Abyss> Astronaut2

II: Morph Dusseldorf> Cyclone> Munchkin Invasion1 3> Morph Dusseldorf> Alter Ego4> Jigsaw Earth

Encore: Rock Candy

1 inverted
2 ending only
3 with "The Thieving Magpie" tease
4 unfinished

01/17/08 Boulder Theater Boulder, CO

I: Jam > Run Like Hell > Crix1 > Spy2

II: Jam > Story of the World > Helix > Robots1 > Story, Dribble>Run Like Hell

Encore: Abraxis > Helix

1 inverted
2 ending only

This Is Really Fun

WOW
It's 2:23 AM
this is really fun
let's do it more

CHALLANGE:
drunk by 3

I'm Happy
Go Biscuits
untz

Islamic or Republican Fascism?

Check it

"The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, "are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power." Vice President Wallace, April 1944

UNTZ

Lan-GO... ALL ABOARD!

I just booked my flight on American Airlines for $295 (total price) and will be landing in Ft. Lauderdale around 3:20pm on 3.06.08

Who else is hopping on this hovercraftbandwagon? Let's make this a Langerizzity to remember with the whole crew. Git yer shrage faces on.

In case you need any more incentive, the weather will be perfect and there's an unlimited supply of $10 nitrous balloons. Make that $20 nitrous balloons--wait, $3? Ok, fine here's two...

bp

Lighter Side

This woman from Portland named Wakeehna has some really dope stuff on the web...while i post the heavy shit to help remind what is at stake...this stuff is like the antonym....cheers, hope all biscuits fans have a memorable shred :)

http://lunaclipse.livejournal.com/
http://illumin.escens.org/

she contributes to RS as well

and also a movie i made...i'm sorry you can't see the text...i'll send a dvd back to CO after i go back to school

UK uses RFID for Prisoners

Via: Independent:

Prisoners ‘to be chipped like dogs’

Hi-tech ’satellite’ tagging planned in order to create more space in jails
Civil rights groups and probation officers furious at ‘degrading’ scheme

By Brian Brady, Whitehall Editor
Published: 13 January 2008

Ministers are planning to implant “machine-readable” microchips under the skin of thousands of offenders as part of an expansion of the electronic tagging scheme that would create more space in British jails.

Amid concerns about the security of existing tagging systems and prison overcrowding, the Ministry of Justice is investigating the use of satellite and radio-wave technology to monitor criminals.

But, instead of being contained in bracelets worn around the ankle, the tiny chips would be surgically inserted under the skin of offenders in the community, to help enforce home curfews. The radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, as long as two grains of rice, are able to carry scanable personal information about individuals, including their identities, address and offending record.

The tags, labelled “spychips” by privacy campaigners, are already used around the world to keep track of dogs, cats, cattle and airport luggage, but there is no record of the technology being used to monitor offenders in the community. The chips are also being considered as a method of helping to keep order within prisons.

A senior Ministry of Justice official last night confirmed that the department hoped to go even further, by extending the geographical range of the internal chips through a link-up with satellite-tracking similar to the system used to trace stolen vehicles. “All the options are on the table, and this is one we would like to pursue,” the source added.

The move is in line with a proposal from Ken Jones, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), that electronic chips should be surgically implanted into convicted paedophiles and sex offenders in order to track them more easily. Global Positioning System (GPS) technology is seen as the favoured method of monitoring such offenders to prevent them going near “forbidden” zones such as primary schools.

“We have wanted to take advantage of this technology for several years, because it seems a sensible solution to the problems we are facing in this area,” a senior minister said last night. “We have looked at it and gone back to it and worried about the practicalities and the ethics, but when you look at the challenges facing the criminal justice system, it’s time has come.”

The Government has been forced to review sentencing policy amid serious overcrowding in the nation’s jails, after the prison population soared from 60,000 in 1997 to 80,000 today. The crisis meant the number of prisoners held in police cells rose 13-fold last year, with police stations housing offenders more than 60,000 times in 2007, up from 4,617 the previous year. The UK has the highest prison population per capita in western Europe, and the Government is planning for an extra 20,000 places at a cost of £3.8bn – including three gigantic new “superjails” – in the next six years.

More than 17,000 individuals, including criminals and suspects released on bail, are subject to electronic monitoring at any one time, under curfews requiring them to stay at home up to 12 hours a day. But official figures reveal that almost 2,000 offenders a year escape monitoring by tampering with ankle tags or tearing them off. Curfew breaches rose from 11,435 in 2005 to 43,843 in 2006 – up 283 per cent. The monitoring system, which relies on mobile-phone technology, can fail if the network crashes.

A multimillion-pound pilot of satellite monitoring of offenders was shelved last year after a report revealed many criminals simply ditched the ankle tag and separate portable tracking unit issued to them. The “prison without bars” project also failed to track offenders when they were in the shadow of tall buildings.

The Independent on Sunday has now established that ministers have been assessing the merits of cutting-edge technology that would make it virtually impossible for individuals to remove their electronic tags.

The tags, injected into the back of the arm with a hypodermic needle, consist of a toughened glass capsule holding a computer chip, a copper antenna and a “capacitor” that transmits data stored on the chip when prompted by an electromagnetic reader.

But details of the dramatic option for tightening controls over Britain’s criminals provoked an angry response from probation officers and civil-rights groups. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: “If the Home Office doesn’t understand why implanting a chip in someone is worse than an ankle bracelet, they don’t need a human-rights lawyer; they need a common-sense bypass.

“Degrading offenders in this way will do nothing for their rehabilitation and nothing for our safety, as some will inevitably find a way round this new technology.”

Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, said the proposal would not make his members’ lives easier and would degrade their clients. He added: “I have heard about this suggestion, but we feel the system works well enough as it is. Knowing where offenders like paedophiles are does not mean you know what they are doing.

“This is the sort of daft idea that comes up from the department every now and then, but tagging people in the same way we tag our pets cannot be the way ahead. Treating people like pieces of meat does not seem to represent an improvement in the system to me.”

The US market leader VeriChip Corp, whose parent company has been selling radio tags for animals for more than a decade, has sold 7,000 RFID microchips worldwide, of which about 2,000 have been implanted in humans. The company claims its VeriChips are used in more than 5,000 installations, crossing healthcare, security, government and industrial markets, but they have also been used to verify VIP membership in nightclubs, automatically gaining the carrier entry – and deducting the price of their drinks from a pre-paid account.

The possible value of the technology to the UK’s justice system was first highlighted 18 months ago, when Acpo’s Mr Jones suggested the chips could be implanted into sex offenders. The implants would be tracked by satellite, enabling authorities to set up “zones”, including schools, playgrounds and former victims’ homes, from which individuals would be barred.

“If we are prepared to track cars, why don’t we track people?” Mr Jones said. “You could put surgical chips into those of the most dangerous sex offenders who are willing to be controlled.”

The case for: ‘We track cars, so why not people?’

The Government is struggling to keep track of thousands of offenders in the community and is troubled by an overcrowded prison system close to bursting. Internal tagging offers a solution that could impose curfews more effectively than at present, and extend the system by keeping sex offenders out of “forbidden areas”. “If we are prepared to track cars, why don’t we track people?” said Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo).

Anarchy for the Economy

Via: Reuters:

U.S. chain stores, reeling from the slowest holiday shopping season in five years, got some more bad news on Sunday: 2008 will not be any better and could see changes that may shift the retail playing field forever.

As the National Retail Federation kicked off its annual convention in New York, two retail consultants offered negative outlooks for the U.S. retail industry, which has seen consumers pull back amid higher gasoline and food prices, a credit crunch and a prolonged housing market decline.

“It’s anarchy,” said Wendy Liebmann, chief executive of WSL Strategic Retail, frequently repeating the word she used to sum up the latest results of her company’s bi-annual shopper study.

“Americans cannot control the big things such as oil prices, falling home values, mortgage costs and rising property taxes, so they want to control the small things,” Liebmann said. “They are watching what they spend on everything.”

Liebmann said most shoppers were making fewer weekly shopping trips and spending significantly less on discretionary items such as home appliances and decor, fashion accessories, electronics, perfume, computers and software.

The only two categories getting a larger share of consumers’ wallets are food and pet supplies, Liebmann said, noting however, that food prices have increased.

War Games

Via: Telegraph:

Threats to US ships in the Strait of Hormuz heard at the end of a Pentagon-released recording of an incident between Iranian patrol boats and US Navy warships last week may have been the work of a local heckler known as the “Filipino Monkey”, The Navy Times has reported.

A video released on Friday showed several small Iranian boats approaching US ships in an incident that President Bush has described as “provocative”, while a previously-released audio recording included a threat to destroy the ships.

The Pentagon says the threat was received during the incident.

In accented English a voice is heard to say “I am coming to you … You will explode in a few minutes.” Pentagon officials had previously stated that the voice came from one of the boats, but they are now distancing themselves from that claim, saying instead that they do not know the source of the transmission.

The Navy Times said that the voice in the audio did not match that of an Iranian officer shown speaking to Navy cruiser USS Port Royal over the radio in a video released by the Iranian authorities.

This has led several Navy experts to raise the possibility that a heckler, known locally as the “Filipino Monkey” - or a copycat - could have made the threats.

“Filipino Monkey” is believed to be more than one person. Its modus operandi is to listen in to ship-to-ship radio traffic before jumping in with insults and threats.

According to The Navy Times, US Navy women come in for particularly harsh treatment.

A civilian mariner told the paper that the “Filipino Monkey” phenomenon is worldwide, but more common in areas of heavy shipping such as the Strait of Hormuz.

Despite the discovery that Iran may not have been behind the threats, US President George W Bush has not toned down his rhetoric against the Islamic state. Speaking during his eight-day tour of the Middle East, Mr Bush described Iran as “the world’s leading state sponsor of terror,” which funds extremists, stirs up unrest in Lebanon, arms the Taliban, and threatens the stability of the entire Middle East with its refusal to fully disclose the facts surrounding its nuclear programme.

BISCUITS VAIL

So where the hell are we staying?
Should we hook up a limo ride from say Frisco? Its not that expensive if we all pitch.

Just random thoughts before the shred.
Im guessing know one has any idea thought I might just try to spur some thoughts...

awesome

Just a little quote that is pretty sweet in my opinion...

"One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am -- a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it's still there. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards."
--Edward Abbey

HUNTING - aka Projecting Faults One Sees Within Oneself Upon Others in Order to Ease the Perpetual Pain that is the inability to properly communicate

My life very well may have changed when I read what Alexis deTocqueville had to say about what kind of "despotism" Americans have to fear. I see and hear glimpses of talk regarding change, but I don't know what to place my chips in. We all dissent in our own little ways, but there are a few things, if you would let me, I would like to make clear.

American liberal democracy is one of the most interesting feats of mankind, but as we all should know, has a long, long way to go. Tocqueville's major concern was of a certain "tyranny of the majority" which could ensue in America due to a serious emergence of "equality". Of course many of us view this with ease when we take a look at some of our peers, but I see it among ourselves, especially myself. Those who are given much, I think should be expecting multitudes out of themselves, and we all are very well endowed. Even as I write I do not wish to step on anybody's toes, but I can't help that at this moment in time, I don't give a fuck how hard any one can shred, rage, and/or shrage. If you've got the message, hang up the phone. If you haven't gotten the message, step outside, look at the sky, and wonder why. If you're phone is dead or you don't get reception, find a way to recharge through your own power source and keep searching for higher ground.

If you wish to talk about politics, my best advice is don't take anything lightly. To me it is all a gentle piece of glass suspended over a bed of rocks. We are at a point where capitalist defeated the communist, democratic pushing out the monarchical, but now future of sustainable living, or the possibility of a human existing as a viable species hangs on a thread. We try and create peace with guns, while the media spreads darkness at the speed of light and I view all of this from the tip of the iceberg while many of my fellow citizens are drowning and freezing below. The election, I think, is to be taken into great consideration, but it is not to be seen as a popularity/american idol/MVP contest that the media often portrays it as. There is still plenty of shit that can happen between now and Jan 20, 2009 when Gdub supposedly leaves. My personal opinion, all three democrats will serve a relatively similar purpose, and who should really be running is Michelle Obama, just listen to the speech she gave to the campaign office in New Hampshire or this one in CO.

The way I see it these days is that revolution starts with each and every one of us, and is an act which casts the self into oblivion for the larger whole. When Jean-Jacques Rousseau critiqued the so-called "enlightened thought" of France and England in the 18th century, he noted that in the forest of the Iroquois, if you were hurt and lying helpless on the ground, one of those men would help you without question. But in the streets of Paris, men would step over you every single day. We have inherited this land from those people, but yet we have displayed the soul of the enlightened european. That, to me, should not be taken lightly. We are on shaky ground my friends, be good, or else it all might come crashing down.


"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars." walt whitman

I'm not saying drop everything you do to trip out in your head like me...It's not all always such a shrage...I don't want to sound like a condescending asshole either....I realize my faults in communication...That i resort to writing latenight rants when I feel everybody is sleeping with south park smiles on their faces....But please just don't step out of one box and into another, you can't afford it....3 billion heartbeats


Sincerely,

General Direction
Honoring the place in you in which the entire universe dwells since 1987 AD


"If travel is searching, and home is what we've found...I'm not stopping...I'm going hunting." bjork

"The suppression of the natural fascination with altered states of consciousness, and the current perilous situation of all life on earth, are intimately and casually connected." terrence mckenna

"Poetry is not magic. In so far as poetry, or any other of the arts, can be said to have an ulterior purpose, it is, by telling the truth, to disenchant and disintoxicate." w.h. auden

"We have art in order that we may not perish from truth." nietzsche

"Here's a thought for everyman who tried to understand what's in his hands....He walks along the open road of love and life, surviving if he can....Bound by all the weight of all the worlds he tried to save, chained to all the places that he never wished to stay...Bound with all the weight of all the worlds he tried to save, as he faced the sun he cast no shadow...........................When they took his soul, they stole his pride." noel gallagher

All I need is LOVE, not Luvs!!!

Is anyone else just disgusted with the overwhelming appearance of Beatles' music in current advertising campaigns and jingles. The other day, as I sat in front of the television being a product of a generation that indulges in media consumption and apparently endorses these sellouts, I was appalled at two commercials. Target's hello-goodbye, hello-goodBUY which was immediately followed by some bitch telling me "All you need is Luv's." Yeah that's right, Luv's the disposable diaper. Who said it was okay to turn a 1960's peace anthem into into a jingle that sells shit collectors (that probably aren't heady enough to biodegrade and therefore pollute our environment, haha) to young parents? It may make for a clever PR/Ad campaign, but I'm sure, or at least I hope i'm sure, that many consider this a disgrace.

"Elizabeth Freund, U.S. spokeswoman for Apple Corps Ltd., the London-based group formed by the Beatles that helps guard their legacy, said Sony/ATV Music Publishing (a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Michael Jackson) holds publishing rights for “All You Need Is Love.” Sony/ATV does not need permission from surviving Beatles or heirs to license the songs in its Beatles catalog." -International Herald Tribune

Thanks Michael. For pooping in the pants of righteous Beatles fan everywhere.

Create the world in front of which you will kneel

Catachresis (from Greek κατάχρησις)- The incorrect or improper use of a word. Using or mispronouncing a word consciously to create new meanings. Using a word to denote something radically different from its normal meaning. Using a word to denote something for which, without the catachresis, there is no actual name. Using a word out of context. A harsh metaphor involving the use of a word beyond its strict sphere.

CrazyJourney

I met these guys Fintan & Dave on a side trip they were taking near Bangkok...They had a sweet set up and camera filming for a documentary they were doing. As well as collecting funds for charity, they were having a blast

click the title link--crazy journey
talk about one massive road trip

And the Relief

WHAT THE HELL!!!!!

This is worse than www.conservapedia.com...........Welcome to Godtube.com

recently i have been trying to stay away from "conspiracy theories" and para-normal readings in order to focus my energy more on positive and actionable issues. i feel that it is dangerous to keep my head in a space where everything that i concern myself with is skeptical and abstract. while those modes of thought are very necissary to keeping one's eyes open, it at times felt as though it was dragging me down. i felt the need to apply my knowledge in positive ways to keep my head up and point to the light for others.
today i encountered two major issues in trying to continue in this way of thinking:

the below article about super-delegates (last post)

and this article by pinchbeck

in getting excited about the promise of change to our white house via the democratic voices of obama and edwards, i was taken aback by the fact that they could garner enough populous support in the nation, but still lose out thanks to nameless party super-powers set in place to keep the status quo.

the pinchbeck article renwed by lack of faith in the power of emerging technologies and brought me back to a state of disbelief and fear.

it is tough to remain positive in light of the attrocities that we are surrounded with in this nation both blatently and covertly. the tough charge for me is to stay with my eyes to the sky and yet not let the underpinnings of our society go unnoticed or ultimately crush my will....

pooop

Tyranny

Published on Saturday, January 5, 2008 by The Nation

The Tyranny of Super-Delegates

by Katrina vanden Heuvel

Barack Obama’s stirring victory in Iowa was also a good night for our democracy. The turnout broke records and young people - who were mobilized and organized - participated in unprecedented numbers. And now that Iowans have spoken - the first citizens in the nation to do so - here’s the Democratic delegate count for the top three candidates (2,025 delegates are needed to secure the nomination):

Clinton - 169

Obama - 66

Edwards - 47

“Huh?” you say. “vanden Heuvel, you made a MAJOR typo.”

In fact, those numbers are correct: the third-place finishing Sen. Hillary Clinton now has over twice as many delegates as Sen. Obama, and more than three times as many delegates as the second-place candidate, Sen. John Edwards. Why? Because the Democratic Party uses an antiquated and anti-democratic nominating system that includes 842 “super-delegates” - un-pledged party leaders not chosen by the voters, free to support the candidate of their choice, and who comprise more than forty percent of the delegates needed to win the nomination. Many have already announced the candidate they will support.

In a clear attempt to protect the party establishment, this undemocratic infrastructure was created following George McGovern’s landslide defeat in 1972. It was designed to prevent a nominee who was “out of sync with the rest of the party,” Northeastern University political scientist William Mayer told MSNBC. Democratic National Committee member Elaine Kamarck called it a “sort of safety valve.”

In 1988, Reverend Jesse Jackson challenged the notion that these appointed delegates be permitted to vote for the candidate of their choosing rather than the winner of the state’s caucus or primary. He was right to do so. Twenty years later, when the word “change” is being bandied about, isn’t it time for the Democratic Party to give real meaning to the word? Strengthen our democracy by reforming the super-delegate system so that the people, not the party establishment, choose their candidate.

Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor of The Nation.

© 2008 The Nation

Super-delegate in wiki

obama wins Iowa primary

obama bested the other democrates by garnering 39% of the democratic caucus support last night in Iowa. John edwards finished second by edging out clinton by mere fractions of a percent.
obama is the man and this victory speech outlines why i think he should be the next president. he has the swager, ideas and eloquence to make change a reality and to restore confidence in the politics of our country.
my dad was comparing him to the the good Dr. and JFK as we listened to him.

Happy New Year

Here are two articles recently posted on Reality Sandwich that are engaging and positive.

Homo Luminus...consciousness and evolution
RS's discussion of Nassim Haramein's ideas

Hope everyone had a beautiful holiday...let's get ready to untz some faces.