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The Last Post

2009-09-24T03:44:00.005+01:00

Don't really use this blog much, if I ever really did. I'm involved over on Shallow Rave, if that helps.

Scientology is a Dangerous Cult

2008-05-23T15:11:00.006+01:00

It's no secret that Scientology dislikes criticism. They have been infamous for their use of litigation and 'bullbaiting' to silence critics. They call this practice Fair Game.
At the recent protests in london, the Cult took this a step further than i had ever heard of them doing previously.
They had a teenager arrested for accusing them of being a cult rather than a religion (video). The City of London police force asked him to remove the offending sign, and he refused. He produced, among other evidence, a quote from a judge that supported his accusation(video).

Scientology is both immoral and socially obnoxious... In my judgement it is corrupt, sinister and dangerous. It is corrupt because it is based on lies and deceit and has as its real objective money and power for Mr. Hubbard, his wife and those close to him at the top.
It is sinister because it indulges in infamous practices both to its adherents who do not toe the line unquestioningly, and to those who criticise or oppose it. It is dangerous because it is out to capture people, especially children and impressionable young people, and indoctrinate and brainwash them so that they become the unquestioning captives and tools of the cult, withdrawn from ordinary thought, living and relationships with others.

- Mr Justice Latey, 1984, The Old Bailey

The crown prosecution service has seen fit to drop the case, and the City of London force says they will police future events with this precedent in mind.

But what of the Cult? Well, as Stewart Lamont commented years ago,"it would appear that to Scientologists, the decision of a court means what they want it to mean."
It would appear that the decision of the court will allow those who wish to criticise the cult to do so freely. Only time will tell if Tom Cruise and David Miscavige's 'Church' will accept this.

The as it happens thread started by the arrested boy is over here.

Fashionably Late Baby Jesus Presents

2007-12-30T16:20:00.000Z

Welcome to ahrefequals Winterval extravaganza, in celebration both of the end of winter and the birth of everyone's bestest best friend, Baby Jesus (not to be confused with Big Baby Jesus, RIP). Sure, I'm late, but a good party takes a few days to recover from. How was yours?
Of course, nobody reads this blog. But hey! If you do, you can get yourself some free stuff!

As you can see, Little Rock Records is giving away some music. It's pretty hot shit, and it's yours if you want it.
Little Rock are often to be found giving stuff away, doing free gigs and generally being really fucking cool about sharing their hard work. They have several acts across several styles, and all of their free MP3s are on their website. All of it is well worth checking out.
And be honest; if it wasn't free, you'd just dinghy it to go and download the new Girls Aloud or Katie Melua Best of for fuck all anyway. So, you know, why the heck not?

(The images below are links to zips, or you can go over to the website and see what other goodies they have.)

First up, for all your winterval disco needs, the Disco Beard has you:

Next up is the ever-free EP from Copyleft. Copyleft are a live band based in Glasgow who make hip hop. Featuring MC Tickle and producer Brad Manners, polemic and storytelling come together over laid back grooves bound by an ideal; that music is for sharing.

But wait! There's more! Ambient mystery men, Art/Audio Interface, have some of their chilled yet faintly disturbing wierdness for you:

IDM take on one of the old masters of comedy in a marriage of techno and slam poetry:

...and then there's a Trippy Diso edit; more diso for all you disco lovers, this time with Even More Sexy!

tap

2007-09-21T04:24:00.000+01:00

"There's nothing in any piece of legislation that stops you from putting a physical bug in a room, an office or something like that provided you are there lawfully and you haven't committed any criminal offence to get access to it"

mother of the future

2007-06-13T21:13:00.000+01:00

the sarah conner chronicles ...could be awesome.

2007-05-27T13:49:00.000+01:00

2007-05-23T23:58:00.000+01:00

...against their own kind!

2007-05-12T01:07:00.000+01:00

hero in a half shell!

2007-05-11T12:58:00.000+01:00

cowabunga!

sock monkeys

2007-05-08T13:54:00.000+01:00

zombies!
mr T!
life sized, anatomically correct sock monkeys!

orson whales?

2007-05-05T02:08:00.000+01:00

what the fuck kinda title is orson whales?
it's a good job it's cool, with a lame name like that.

play safe.

2007-05-04T02:00:00.000+01:00

hot or not?

evolution

2007-04-27T14:20:00.001+01:00

...graffiti style.
(NSFW site, SFW link)

Westboro Baptist Church; Pitching a Song to Slayer

2007-04-23T00:26:00.000+01:00

god hates the world!
and all her people!
to be honest, i don't think they'll be into it.
it's not scary at all.

i'm sure they had fun making it, though.
everyone i know loves a bit of cathartic expression of their unjustified hatred, and i'm sure these dullwitted fools are no different.

i am curious how they square the 'god hates the world' message with that whole 'god is love' thing, but hey, fuck it.
i have two leather belts and i'm vegetarian.
we can't all be perfect, can we?
i mean, come on.
if we needed these spiritually bereft morons to actually understand their saviour's message before ramming it down our throats then we'd have missed out on this classic track, and all those lovely sermons they broadcast.

i wonder if they'll get into terrorizer?

playing feminist bingo

2007-04-21T19:31:00.000+01:00

this is a bingo card.
have a look at the squares, familiarise yourself with their content, and then go over and play on the comments of this news story.

i was reading the story because it was in my google alerts for local news.
i wasn't reading it to suggest the web play feminist bingo.
i'm giving you the card first because i think it might be more fun than just reading the total bollocks from some of these tools.
god knows you can get enough of reading stupid shit written by tools.

some of the comments also put me in mind of my new friend morchades' words, words i loved when i read them.

When I mention the wolf in my front yard, please don't pop in to tell me the tiger in the next town is worse.
Yes, I know tigers are vicious.
Yes, I know tigers are bigger than wolves.
Yes, I know tigers are faster than wolves.
Yes, I know tigers are stronger than wolves.
Yes, I know the tiger was last seen traveling in my direction.
None of this changes the fact there is a fucking wolf in my fucking front yard.
I'm going to worry about that first, thank you.

what's ms. dynamite been up to?

2007-04-19T15:44:00.000+01:00

looks like she's been spending her time well.

jesus christ!

2007-04-19T02:37:00.000+01:00

click Him!

if that isn't enough for you, then yes, you can find out more.

do you protest?

2007-04-15T21:53:00.000+01:00

“Listen, here’s the thing about politics: It’s not an expression of your moral purity and your ethics and your probity and your fond dreams of some utopian future. Progressive people constantly fail to get this.”
--Tony Kushner

i'd have said it without the word progressive, but hey.
people like Tony like to express their moral purity and and their ethics by defining themselves against people's approach to politics as much as people, perhaps more often 'progressives', like to define themselves against other people's politics.

thanks to livejournal and zoje george for the quote.

bedlam and the weege

2007-04-13T13:27:00.000+01:00

extra! extra!
glasgow twinned with birthplace of the christ!

The two cities had signed a friendship agreement in 1990 which reflected circumstances in Palestinian areas at that time. Now, the council have voted to formalise its current links into a full town twinning. Baillie Devine said: "Glasgow and Bethlehem have a friendship going back many years. This agreement will deepen and strengthen those links."

work that wii!

2007-04-12T18:03:00.000+01:00

wee wii weegie workout...

love and hate and the hop

2007-04-12T12:11:00.000+01:00

there was once a thread, over on barbelith.
that thread began primarily about the false dichotomy between the underground and pop-hop camps, or myth of 'underground' hip-hop's creative and ideological superiority to 'hip-pop', but it went a few directions; it became about double standards, perceptions of misogyny, and some folks' distaste with the over-bling and super-sexing they perceive in modern hip hop.

zuky seems to be on the same tack at the moment, having a look at some of the shit talked around this subject, the subject of mainstream hip hop.

memo to white folks and the mass media
byron hurt - misogyny in hip hop

one post contains a video, and the other contains venn diagrams.
what's not to like?
also of interest is this PDF about 'detours', found on zuky's comments.

post hoc ergo propter hoc

2007-04-04T19:54:00.000+01:00

it's latin.

it refers to a fallacy:
A occurred, then B occurred.
Therefore, A caused B.

one of the more common mistakes made by the easily satisfied, myself and all you other talking monkeys included.

2007-03-28T03:35:00.000+01:00

i just finished a book

2007-03-23T18:04:00.000Z

i haven't finished a book in a while, not since one big damn puzzler, john harding's enchanting tale of an american lawyer out of his depth in the pacific. the promise of a pidgin-scripted hamlet kept me blasting through that quirky tome. since then life and all that shit that goes with it keeps getting in the way of simple fun stuff like reading, and no book has grabbed me sufficiently to get me all the way through.

but hey.
the curious incident of the dog in the night-time was so well written i rattled through it in only two short sittings in three long days. getting to geek-out on maths problems as i went was an added bonus, but i think the real draw is just how charming the main character is. haddon ensures his life feels very real and very likeable, however alien his reality is to my own, giving me what felt like an insight into the life of a kid with aspergers.

thank you, mark haddon, for all your hard work.
(markhaddon.com)

word flood...

2007-03-15T00:45:00.000Z

george carlin's HBO stand up, with a great slam intro.

sesame street?

2007-03-11T20:26:00.000Z

i wouldn't have picked it, but fuck me.
cool.
dude also does peter and the wolf, and more besides.

web comics - procrastination tool par excellence

2007-02-23T15:42:00.000Z

shooting war, covering the coverage of the war du jour.
you can also get 'kelly' from the same place, but i havent read that yet.
let me know if it's worth skiving for.

some folks, eh? kill'em all, i say.

2007-02-17T04:54:00.000Z

antonine plato 'thinks' a cull of the ned population is in order, ostensibly so that nobody kills anymore deer.
well, as solutions go, it's certainly fairly final.
of course, he's sure to only be talking about the ones who are actually killing deer, yeah? as you can clearly see from the photograph he uses to describe the stereotype he hates and blames for... wait, is this reallyabout deer?

prejudice is ugly, plato. you and all the other people who can tell who should be killed by looking at them are bigots, plain and simple.
but of course, you only hate the ones who do the bad things. so, can you prove that the kids in the picture are criminals, or were you engaged in defamation of their character based on their appearance?

buying that tape was the biggest mistake of my life

2007-02-17T04:06:00.000Z

"A couple of years ago while I was listening to rock music behind my parents' backs I became very suicidal. I could not figure out why, but I really reacted to the idea that my music might have something to do with it. It was only after confessing what I was doing to God and to my parents and then cutting off all rock music that I lost the desire to kill myself.
"God was very gracious to me and He saved me from that awful destructive music. I thank Him daily for that deliverance."

A Sixteen-Year-Old Student From Kansas

inside the monkeysphere...

2007-02-04T14:42:00.000Z

yeah, you.
not entirely perfect, as theories go, but still.

raped, and then sent to prison

2007-01-30T21:08:00.000Z

i can't really figure out how to write about this.
a woman was raped and, when she reported it, was thrown in handcuffs and arrested. the four year old warrant she was arrested for turned out to be a paperwork error and a juvenile offence, and yet considered so much more important than her rape that she was thrown in jail for the next two days.
despite being prescribed it at hospital, she was denied the emergency contraception pill because the medical supervisor at the jail said that doing so was against her religion.

i'm sorry, but what the FUCK?

from the article:

"They were more interested in prosecuting her for something that's a paperwork snafu from four years ago, that was juvenile. They were more interested in working on that than finding an experienced rapist," stated the victim's mother.
...

"The medical supervisor would not allow her to take the pill because she said it was against her, the supervisor's, religion. So, here we have a medical supervisor imposing her beliefs on a rape victim," claimed the victim's attorney Virlyn Moore. "As a human being, how someone could be so violated by this monster and then the system comes along and rapes her again psychologically and emotionally - it's outrageous and unconscionable."

woah...

2007-01-30T18:52:00.000Z

foot tongue!

young republicans want to help!

2007-01-26T07:01:00.000Z

the unapolagetic mexican Vs passionate max

2007-01-26T04:54:00.000Z

mel gibson's new film.
i know; woop dee doo.
while the papers have featured articles about separating criticism of the artist from a critique of the art, i have been a little wary of putting money into mel 'the jews!' gibson's pocket.
something about rewarding failure just sits wrong with me, and hateful failure only more so.

but hey, what about apocalypto? maybe it's actually really good!
oh, sure. and maybe riggs isnt a raving nutbar with religious beliefs that go all the way up to 'crazy like a phelps'.

thank god for nezua, for saving me the ticket money.
i owe you a beer.

one nation under god

2007-01-25T23:30:00.000Z

terms a modern clever might need

2007-01-22T19:15:00.002Z

the must-knows, according to sentient developments.

(found via linkmachinego)

what not to wear....

2007-01-22T19:11:00.000Z

MAN WEARS T-SHIRT, OFFENDS

i'm with londonist- we need to be a bit more specific if we're going to start telling people what t-shirts they can and cannot wear on public transport. i reckon the in flight movie is more likely to cause offence or distress than the graphic on somene's chest.

i'm not a racist!

2007-01-20T11:34:00.000Z

ah, jade.
i hope your career is now in tatters, and i hope your comrades find theirs just as dead.

just because you say you arent a racist doesnt mean you arent. even if it were sane to trust your judgement in this, just because you arent 'A Racist', card carrying and proud, doesnt mean you werent engaged in racism.
you halfwit.
that goes for jade's boyfriend jack, jo from s-club and danielle from... uh.. where are you from again?

was anybody else reminded of litle britain by her eviction interview? despite the scripting and coaching clearly showing through, she still managed to0 make no sense, sounding more like vicky pollard's 'yeahbutnoyeahbutnobutter' than anything else.

i've never liked jade all that much, but now that she has shown herself to be a bully, again, i think we can safely throw her and her hideous family on the pop culture scrapheap.
she should lose her job, and so should all the rest of the bigots and bullies on our airwaves.

Are you racist?
Are you as dumb as Jade?

long time no post...

2007-01-19T17:34:00.000Z

january has been empty and sullen, and has given me nothing but the desire for it to be february as soon as possible.
sunday is basement breaks, so it isnt all bad.

but hey.
when all the world conspires to make you feel like shit, there's always someone you can laugh at, someone you can derive bounteous self esteem by merely observing.

to that end, i feel everyone should pep up their wintery week by watching jade goody's impending eviction from the BB house.
i havnet watched single episode of the show yet, but i'm tuning in for sure tonight.
ratings-spike-machine-go!

nazi bulletin board stormfront have mounted a campaign on digital spy to get shilpa ousetd in favour of their aryan princess jade. they seem to have missed that jade is mixed race herself. nice one, whitey!
(i'm not linking to the white power freaks. if you really want you can google the name.)
if the car crash isnt already sucking you in, you might want to have a read of the jadegoodyonline.com forums, where some of the undereducated '14 words' crowd have had a go at defending the cadre of craven cretins currently in the BB house, and where some have even suggested that her children be fed to ian huntley.
the site's admin is trying hir best to defend the girl, but i think ze's all but on hir own.
if you need more reasons(and honestly, why would you?) i should point out that paul dannan and noel edmonds are also putting in some keyboard time over there.

hideous, sure.
but hilarious too.

if the site seems down, try again in a minute.
the increase in traffic has all but crippled them.

dancing hitler!

2006-12-31T18:44:00.000Z

Jesus H. B3ta!
if he can dance, you can dance.

happy hogmanay to all.
now go kick some ass.

low-res film libary action

2006-12-21T04:56:00.000Z

i've been watching the situationist international documentary, but they have loads of great stuff.
there's a whole gaggle of science documentaries over here as well, including dawkins' movie about the god delusion.

like sex!

only not.

are you up to the blasphemy challenge?

2006-12-19T17:10:00.000Z

and all they want is your soul!
damn yourself to hell by renouncing the holy spirit on you tube and get a free DVD!

some terrorists get all the torture

2006-12-19T13:59:00.000Z

Unlike alleged al-Qaida terrorist Jose Padilla, right-wing "dirty bomber" Demetrius Crocker was investigated and prosecuted the old-fashioned constitutional way.

He had made a version of Zyklon B, the gas used in the gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps, and he accurately described its manufacture. He had made nitroglycerin. He had the ingredients for a rudimentary bomb in his home, where he also kept several guns he told Burroughs he would use to kill any government agent sent to capture him.

why do nazi terrorists get an easier ride than muslims?
can anyone tell me that?

there was another nazi terrorist, this time in britain, and he hasnt even made it to the papers yet. at the time it was suggested tha there was a DA notice, or that it was being kept from the front page until the trial. there isnt a restriction on reporting it, otherwise the few places it has been mentioned so far(new statesman, guardian diary, the local pendle paper site) wouldnt have been able to mention it.

so what's the excuse?
i'm as worried about nazis as i am about al quaeda(perhaps more so, as i have actually met BNP members), and i wonder why the mainstream press isnt as well.

winning hearts and minds...

2006-12-19T00:27:00.000Z

...through automated cold calling.

just when current strategy in iraq seemed the most ridiculous collection of tactics for winning the aforementioned, along comes another string to the coallition of the shilling's already overstrung bow of incompetent ideas.

Not long after Republicans harrassed tens of thousands of Americans with automated phone messages in November's election, news comes that the robo call, that staple of American democracy, is being deployed in Iraq. And it's literally terrorizing city residents.Nir Rosen of the new blog Iraqslogger reports, calling it a "mysterious psychological operations campaign," that Baghdad residents have reported "receiving phone calls that the caller ID shows to be originating from outside Iraq." What follows is a "recorded message from an anonymous man speaking formal Arabic" who goes on to condemn the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia headed by the powerful cleric Muqtada al Sadr that's been a continual thorn in the U.S.'s side.

apprently some fear that recieving the calls will mark them out as anti-mahdi, having little or no experience of automated services like this and fearing their calls are being monitored.
the calls come from an untraceable number, and are, to my mind, as likely to spread distrust of al Sadr as cold calling is to sell me a timsehare.

either these are some really stupid people, or they arent trying to discredit al Sadr at all. it seems horrible to wish for it, but i hope to heck they are just idiots.
the alternative is too hideous to contemplate.

i missed it last time round

2006-12-18T00:18:00.000Z

...but luckily ©opyleft are playing again, and this time for free.
haste ye to the halt bar, hip hoppers!

spell or die!

2006-12-17T15:23:00.000Z

your keyboard is a weapon.

humming search engine

2006-12-16T07:59:00.000Z

ever had a tune stuck in your head that you can't identify?
try the humming search.

it's a little premature, but...

2006-12-14T02:02:00.000Z

merry christmas!

fun with fake people

2006-12-11T23:35:00.000Z

i wish i had a steady supply of these plastic people.
(the same site also has some pretty cool pictures of low rider customs)

the god helmet

2006-12-11T01:58:00.000Z

mentioned in some of the threads i mentioned earlier, the god helmet is availble for purchase. they call it a shakti helmet, after the hindu concept of force, or 'active' divine energy.

it offers a recreation of the revelation experience at the flick of a switch:

"Dr Persinger has designed a helmet that produces a very weak rotating magnetic field of between ten nanotesla and one microtesla over the temporal lobes of the brain. This is placed on the subject's head and they are placed in a quiet chamber while blindfolded. So that there is no risk of 'suggestion', the only information that the subjects are given is that they are going in for a relaxation experiment. Neither the subject nor the experimenter carrying out the test has any idea of the true purpose of the experiment. In addition to this, the experiment is also run with the field switched both off and on. This procedure Dr Persinger claims will induce an experience in over 80% of test subjects."

brooker on intelligent design

2006-12-09T16:58:00.000Z

Creationists reject Darwin's theory of evolution on the grounds that it is "just a theory". This is a valid criticism: evolution is indeed merely "a theory", albeit one with ten billion times more credence than the theory of creationism - although, to be fair, the theory of creationism is more than just a theory. It's also a fairy story. And children love fairy stories, which is presumably why so many creationists are keen to have their whimsical gibberish taught in schools.

oh charlie, how you rock.

is coffee just too much hassle?

2006-12-09T07:02:00.000Z

don't worry.
now there's soap.

to be a tall woman

2006-12-08T23:55:00.000Z

To begin with, to be extra-tall is to be somehow more public than the average woman. Everybody sees me. Strangers on the subway peer upward and tell me about their childhood neighbor who was tall. Fellow grocery shoppers sheepishly request my help procuring items from upper shelves. Male passers-by mutter, "That was one giant woman." Men seem particularly inclined to register one characteristic: tall.

(thanks to jess of the f-word. story originally from feministing)

if you're going to whine, at least make it interesting

2006-12-08T21:23:00.000Z

a chorus of british complaints, devised by two scandinavian artists and sung by a birmingham choir. you can see the video on youtube.

a choir from helsinki has also picked up the ball and run with it.

(found via plan b)

barbelith debates belief

2006-12-08T15:44:00.000Z

...in stereo

head shop channel
temple channel

both are worth a read, as they are debating one of the major issues of contemporary times from quite different angles.

some other spots on that board are of interest too;

richard dawkins - discussion on richard dawkins new foundation for reason and science.
where do we get our values from now? - If one does not believe in 1 or more transcendental god/dess((e)s), is a materialist, and a post-modernist (as in "there are no privileged narratives that substantiate universal moral or epistemic claims), how do we justify our moral values?
an atheist manifesto - on the text of a manifesto by sam harris, a stanford philosophy graduate and writer who published 'end of faith'
'fictional' vs. 'real' magic - can gandalf teach us anything? is the corpus hermeticum a work of fiction? is it valuable to distinguish fiction and fact?
richard dawkins is a fox - a lighter take on everyone's favourite vitriolic atheist.
raising children as atheists - an older discussion on the ethics of passing on your world view

and finally;

god is imaginary - an atheist aggresively attacks the faith of some very intelligent people, and a discussion arises despite the inauspicious start..

realistic internet simulator

2006-12-06T04:00:00.000Z

i thought the simulation's setup felt a little dated, but it was certainly accurate.

nobody's perfect

2006-12-04T02:21:00.000Z

and we shouldn't be fooled into thinking they are.
(found all over the web.)

all you need to know

2006-12-02T01:29:00.000Z

(thank you mr. sizemore and thank your filthy flickr.)

steam punk plane

2006-11-28T16:09:00.000Z

from the ukraine.
inlcudes steam punk transformer images further down.
(also found via boingboing)

hard landing

2006-11-27T02:20:00.000Z

are they insane?

(found via boing boing)

how hubble killed god...

2006-11-26T01:40:00.000Z

those specks you see are not stars, they’re other galaxies

don't trust the corporate media

2006-11-25T17:19:00.000Z

FAIR - fairness and accracy in reporting

"saying 'only a word' is a bit like saying, hey... its only a nuclear warhead"

2006-11-22T19:49:00.000Z

war of words:

"Feminism"; "Slut"; "Bitch": all powerful words evoking strong (mostly negative) reactions. Should we reclaim tainted words, or drop them for something less provocative? Kate Townshend discusses this question, and explains why the language we use to define ourselves - and allow others to use to define us - is still important to the feminist cause.

the real jesus forgives your jesus

2006-11-19T18:24:00.000Z

get the t-shirt!
(found via betty bowers, america's best christian)

watching strippers is free speech?

2006-11-19T14:27:00.000Z

‘You don’t have to work here, lots of girls will be happy to take a finger up the ass for what you’re getting paid.’

USB batteries

2006-11-18T00:46:00.000Z

like i said.
USB batteries.

all about whitney

2006-11-17T21:10:00.000Z

that's whitney biennial.
whitney biennial dot com rather than the other whitney biennial.
'rather than' but also 'inexorably intertwined with'...

PC gone MAAAAAAAD...

2006-11-14T12:16:00.000Z

Simply put, the great "PC" cliché, as commonly deployed in mainstream discourse, is cultural propaganda designed to befuddle and misdirect while defending the current power structure. All politics deal with power relations, and in the debate over America's alleged climate of "political correctness", there's a stark asymmetry of power between the defiant megaphone-wielders who complain of being constrained by humorless hypersensitivity from below, and the under-represented people of color, women, LGBT, handicapped, poor, and otherwise marginalized or dispossessed people who have no choice but to absorb the linguistic, cultural, and physical barbs of the ruling class. The former feel psycho-emotionally oppressed by their inability to crack puerile ethnic jokes without criticism; the latter simply are oppressed.

found via barbelith, originally from here.

i only just found this...

2006-11-09T14:42:00.000Z

children’s lingerie?

word jazz

2006-11-09T12:00:00.000Z

ken nordine.

what a voice. what a wonderer.

did the KLF invent pete doherty?

2006-11-07T12:48:00.000Z

"think about how truly absurd and drug-addled doherty seems to be, and ask yourself: how could this man still be alive?"

kaoklai kaennorsing

2006-11-06T11:34:00.000Z

kaoklai is not someone you could easily fuck with.
watch him get out the way and how quickly he takes the fight straight to his opponents.
check out the big guy about four minutes in, if nothing else.

nonstop music?

2006-11-04T19:00:00.000Z

follow me.
you'll need a soldering iron.

perspectives on the lancet death toll

2006-10-19T18:42:00.000+01:00

the lancet recently published their figures for deaths caused by the invasion of iraq, causing some controversy.
some information on that here, here and here.

one other perspective caught my interest, over on d-squared digest;

Everyone knows that the standard unit of geography is "an area the size of Wales" (except for military purposes, where for some reason it is "an area the size of France"). Back in the dim days of history when the first Lancet survey came out, Marc Mulholland wrote something which got me to thinking that perhaps a similar standard unit for civil wars ought to be "the worst year in Northern Ireland".

not getting it

2006-10-19T00:57:00.000+01:00

mel gibson has now blamed the jews for causing him to drunkenly blame the jews for all the wars in the world.

i'm not sure the rehab helped...

chinese soldiers murder children

2006-10-16T17:57:00.000+01:00

captured on video by a climber a kilometre away.
(footage from ProTV)

the video proves the chinese government are lying about the incident.
beijing now claims the soldiers were attacked before opening fire, having already attempted to silence the witnesses.

BNP terrorists

2006-10-10T17:32:00.001+01:00

did they really get caught with "a record haul" of chemicals used in making home-made bombs?
and if so, then why isn't it all over the news yet?
it doesnt get mentioned anwywhere on the BBC or channel four websites(except once, on the channel four forum), and i have yet to see a national paper carrying it.

story can be found here and here.

is it indicative of an understanding among the news sources of britain that nobody wants to hear about white bombers?
is it representative of general racist sentiment in the united kingdom, supported by the media desire to pander to it?

certainly looks like it.
i'd be glad to hear otherwise, but so far the only explanation i've heard someone suggest, that there may be a DA notice regarding the case, doesnt seem likely to me.

i say email every newspaper/channel and ask them what's going on.
maybe even the local MP.

stealth marketing

2006-10-10T16:54:00.000+01:00

In stealth-marketing parlance, this is what is known as "roach baiting," but I prefer to call it "the least I can do."

world of warcraft gets the southpark treatment

2006-10-10T16:42:00.001+01:00

found via plasticbag, and viewable here.

word of today!

2006-10-06T22:35:00.000+01:00

HEURISTICS

wiki says:

In psychology, heuristics are simple, efficient rules of thumb hard-coded by evolutionary processes which have been proposed to explain how people make decisions, come to judgments and solve problems, typically when facing complex problems or incomplete information. These rules work well under most circumstances, but in certain cases lead to systematic cognitive biases.

For instance, people may tend to perceive more expensive beers as tasting better than inexpensive ones. This finding holds true even when prices and brands are switched; putting the high price on the normally relatively inexpensive brand is enough to lead experimental participants to perceive that beer as tasting better than the beer that is normally relatively expensive. One might call this "price implies quality" bias.

and wrightwayconsulting.org say some more:

Researchers have been studying the way the brain functions in making decisions for half a century. This research reveals that people use unconscious routines to cope with the complexity inherent in most decisions. These routines, rules of thumb or simplifying strategies, known as heuristics, direct our judgment and serve us well in most situations. However, sometimes they lead to serious errors resulting from unchecked biases, misperceptions or irrational anomalies in our thinking. These errors in judgment easily go unchecked because they are hardwired into our thinking process – we fail to recognize them even as we walk right into them.
Common heuristics, biases and judgment traps [can be found in the full text].

(WARNING : link leads to document download)

there's a bit more information here, but you will have to register.
(they do have a five day trial.)

see that limbo for unbaptised babies thing?

2006-10-05T20:54:00.000+01:00

well, it wasnt true.

The evidence suggests Benedict XVI never believed in limbo anyway. But in the evangelisation zones of Africa and Asia, the Pope - an authority on all things Islamic - is aware Muslims believe the souls of stillborn babies go straight to heaven.
Looking to spread the faith in countries with high infant mortality, now is a good time to make it clear the stillborn babies of Christian mothers go to heaven, too.

hide the sex pest: the republicans get caught doing a vatican

2006-10-05T13:24:00.000+01:00

"I am not going to resign", he told Mr Limbaugh."I have done nothing wrong and for me to resign would just play into the hands of our opponents."

mark foley commenting on his attempts to secure a picture of a sixteen year old boy via email while a member of the house of representatives in washington.

others see things differently.
a few others.
a fair few others.
some, predictably, blame the kid.
(if you want to you can hear matt drudge calling the kid a 'beast' and a 'predator'.)

you can see the text of some of foley's conversations over on wikipedia.

this means war!

2006-09-29T21:38:00.000+01:00

"i wanna see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are over in pakistan, israel and pakistan, and all those other different places"
or
"there are two kinds of people in the world; people who love jesus, and people who dont."

dodgeball?

2006-09-28T03:56:00.000+01:00

dodgeball.

free your mind... will the masonry follow?

2006-09-12T22:13:00.000+01:00

Human progress is our cause,
liberty of thought our supreme wish,
freedom of conscience our mission,
and the guarantee of equal rights
to all people everywhere our ultimate goal.

now who could have a problem with someone saying that?
well, you, possibly. i think most folks would agree with what is being said. i'm not so sure who is saying it would be as warmly received. see, the above is the creed of the scottish rite supreme council, 33Â°, S.J. USA, the southern jurisdiction of the 'scottish rite' branch of freemasonry.

the image of freemasonry is, for me, all mixed up with some unexamined ideas about sectarianism in scotland, establishment figures, and some varied conspiracy lunacy encountered in my youth. my vague notion of the whole nebulous beast that is speculative masonry was given a face by grant morrison's character sir miles from the invisibles, and not much happened to change it from then on.

not much, that is, until i met a young german chap wandering australia and was present when someone initiated him into the temple of techno via the gates of ecstatic release.
his was the first voice that i had ever heard in favour of the order to which i gave any credence, and he started me wondering. my wondering didnt get very far, to be honest, still being massively tied to the notion of freemasons as a negative, 'establishment' influence on the world at large.

a big part of my difficulty with the whole idea, i think, is my early introduction to anarchism's favourite soundbyte "no gods, no managers", which would seem mutually exclusive with "the great architect" concept so central to masonic life.
in the battle of anarchists versus masons i've always been with the anarchists.
i have been a friend of the former for a while, my love of punk and the many tendrils of rebellious thinking that surround it informing that love.
but you know how it is with friends; you take their side without thinking too hard about it.

i guess i'm realising my folly, and refamiliarising myself with the truth that sometimes your friends are wrong. not always, clearly, but i reckon it pays to be open to the idea that they might be, especially when your friends are political ideologies.

what might be of interest to someone interrogating the unexamined prejudices about freemasonry they had swallowed whole all their life, as and when they were handed to them?
well, a before and after exposition of the experience of undergoing the 32nd degree would be a good start.

before:
tomorrow i'm taking the 32 degree of scottish rite masonry
after:
the slow motion revolution

thank you barbelith.
again.

remembering John Dee

2006-09-08T06:20:00.000+01:00

John motherfuckin Dee, bitch.

the man is a legend.
i'm not being flippant here, he really is, quite literally, a legend.
he is also a very real historical figure, and the two are not as separate as you might expect from the figure behind a legend so very like a character from shakespeare.

the thing is, he is a character from shakespeare.
Dee was the original prospero on that fated island in the tempest.
he isnt like a character from fiction; a character from fiction is a century spanning tribute to him.
he was of the elite mathematicians, astronomers, astrologers, geographers, and occultists of his day, named by many as the father of that last one in the united kingdom, and even spent some of his illustrious time here on the mortal plane as consultant to his queen, queen elizabeth I, coining for her the phrase 'the british empire'.

from wikipedia;

Dee was an intensely pious Christian, but his Christianity was deeply influenced by the Hermetic and Platonic-Pythagorean doctrines that were pervasive in the Renaissance. He believed that number was the basis of all things and the key to knowledge, that God's creation was an act of "numbering". From Hermeticism, he drew the belief that man had the potential for divine power, and he believed this divine power could be exercised through mathematics. His cabalistic angel magic (which was heavily numerological) and his work on practical mathematics (navigation, for example) were simply the exalted and mundane ends of the same spectrum, not the antithetical activities many would see them as today. His ultimate goal was to help bring forth a unified world religion through the healing of the breach of the Catholic and Protestant churches and the recapture of the pure theology of the ancients.

say what you will about him, he is certainly one of history's most wonderful and fearsomely wise sons, and will no doubt be remembered yet another four hundred years after his death as an old man of over eighty.
yes, over eighty. John Dee saw almost all of the 1500s (save the 27 years he was yet to be born), and some of the 1600s.

a very long life, and one filled with many far reaching actions and words.
John motherfucking Dee, bitch.

global politics

2006-08-22T20:04:00.000+01:00

in 30 seconds!

Baby, Give Me a Kiss

2006-08-21T00:30:00.000+01:00

The man behind the 'Girls Gone Wild' soft-porn empire lets Claire Hoffman into his world, for better or worse.

i'd say 'worse' for him, 'better' for us for knowing.

you've missed it.

2006-08-12T16:50:00.000+01:00

i only just found this, but i like the idea of a global webjam.
i like it a lot.

After one month of violence and carnage, this Global Web Jam brings together live interviews and conversations, video clips, cartoons and blog blurbs, soundscapes, DJs and VJs, a lively mix of information, art, protest, party and reflection. We feature the voices, images stories, reports and initiatives from Lebanon and beyond, with participation of activists, artists, bloggers, journalists, musicians and many others.
This is a call for an immediate end to the violence and destruction, in defiance of war, and in search for solidarity.

http://beirut.streamtime.org
http://streamtime.org

"it’s the occupation, not the fundamentalism"

2006-08-07T18:29:00.000+01:00

The Logic of Suicide Terrorism;
an interview with professor robert pape.
(from the july 18th version of the conservative american, found via the haus of barbelith)

i love israel! and i hate muslims!

2006-08-05T14:45:00.000+01:00

but wait!
there's more!
i'm so much edgier than that!
check me and my racism, expressed the medium of misogyny!
some people are just so dedicated to making the world a better place it blows my fucking mind.

wearing a miniskirt? don't go drinking with bill.

2006-08-05T14:33:00.000+01:00

"She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at 2 in the morning."

sensitive as ever, bill o'reilly lets us know he wouldn't go out like that and, if he did, he'd sure as hell expect to be raped and murdered.

a summary

2006-08-05T05:08:00.000+01:00

every bush speech of the last few years

there's a little bit of theosophy in every religion

2006-08-04T20:06:00.000+01:00

but then some would say it's the other way around.

keep yer bits safe

2006-08-01T00:23:00.000+01:00

make your walls look nice

2006-07-29T21:43:00.000+01:00

soundsystem master, techno collaborationist and part time kraftwerk stand-in lookalike Brink has begun selling some of his graffiti art on ebay.
you should support this capitalist venture, i venture.
and not even because he is my mate, which he is, but because you couldnt get a poster much cheaper than he is currently selling his hand made prints.

recognise.

israel hits the pipe harder than ever

2006-07-26T00:48:00.000+01:00

Israeli bomb kills UN observers

for mike

2006-07-22T21:57:00.000+01:00

i wish i knew the words.
my own fail me.

aunty is watching you

2006-07-22T21:18:00.000+01:00

but of course they are.

folks are often astounded that their little pocket of the internet isnt actually a pocket.
i dont get why.
i for one am reassured that they do read blogs.
it's research, for heaven's sake!
it's what i think journalists should do, if they are to be worth anything at all to us as reporters.

thank you, daniel, for making sure we noticed.

hey!

2006-07-22T11:00:00.000+01:00

you look like a real JERK!

...well, i am a corporate executive!