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Secrets of the Tomb
Inside a cold, foreboding structure of brown sandstone in New Haven, Conn., lives one of the most heavily shrouded secret societies in American history. Yale’s super-elite Skull and Bones, a 200-year-old organization whose roster is stocked with some of the country’s most prominent families: Bush, Harriman, Phelps, Rockefeller, Taft, and Whitney. Journalist Alexandra Robbins, herself a member of another of Yale’s secret societies, interviewed more than a hundred Bonesmen and writes about the rituals that make up the organization. Read an excerpt from her book The Secrets of the Tomb below.

MURDOCH NET PLANS 'AMERICAN CANDIDATE'
Move over American Idol. Here comes American President: A Rupert Murdoch TV game show that may choose the outcome of the next White House race! Cable channel FX is set to mount an ambitious two-year endeavor that will culminate in the American public voting on -- a "people's candidate" to run for president of the United States in 2004!

Pirate talk could shiver your timbers - Did You Do It?
Every now and then, some visionary individuals come along with a concept that is so original and so revolutionary that your immediate reaction is: ``Those individuals should be on medication.''Today I want to tell you about two such people, John Baur and Mark Summers, who have come up with a concept that is going to make you kick yourself for not thinking of it first: Talk Like a Pirate Day. As the name suggests, this is a day on which everybody would talk like a pirate. Is that a great idea or what? There are so many practical benefits that I can't even begin to list them all.
Baur and Summers came up with this idea a few years ago. They were playing racquetball, and, as so often happens, they began talking like pirates. And then it struck them: Why not have a day when everybody talks like a pirate? They decided that the logical day would be Sept. 19 because that -- as you are no doubt aware -- is Summers' ex-wife's birthday.

New Scientist | Guide to the Quantum World | Taming the multiverse
Parallel universes are no longer a figment of our imagination. They're so real that we can reach out and touch them, and even use them to change our world, says Marcus Chown.
FLICKING through New Scientist, you stop at this page, think "that's interesting" and read these words. Another you thinks "what nonsense", and moves on. Yet another lets out a cry, keels over and dies.
Is this an insane vision? Not according to David Deutsch of the University of Oxford. Deutsch believes that our Universe is part of the multiverse, a domain of parallel universes that comprises ultimate reality.

Filming up women's skirts is ruled legal
On Thursday, the state Supreme Court ruled that filming up women's skirts, though "disgusting and reprehensible," isn't actually against the law.

Modern Humorist - The Jim Morrison Simulatron
THIRTY YEARS AGO last week, Doors frontman Jim Morrison mixed drugs, alcohol and asthma to ascend to the big Whisky A Go-Go in the sky. Here in the virtual world, though, Modern Humorist has reanimated him in the form of lines and lines of programming code. Hint: To activate Jimbo, click on the letters that spell out The Doors along the bottom.

You know that it would be untrue
You know that I would be a liar
If I was to say to you
That the Jim Morrison Simulatron
was not the coolest thing ever.

Link O'Rama Dali Lama Ding Dong
DW Cooper sent in a whopper list of esoteric links so we decided to post this mondo list on a page by itself. We have now dubbed DW "The Most Venerable Irish Guru :Link O'Rama Dali Lama Ding Dong". Enjoy!

U.S. Concentration Camps: FEMA and the Rex 84 Program
There over 600 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty. These camps are to be operated by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) should Martial Law need to be implemented in the United States.

Thousands of cold anti-atoms produced at CERN
An international team of physicists working at the Antiproton Decelerator (AD) facility at CERN** has announced the first controlled production of large numbers of antihydrogen atoms at low energies. After mixing cold clouds of trapped positrons and antiprotons - the antiparticles of the familiar electron and proton - under closely monitored conditions, the ATHENA collaboration has identified antihydrogen atoms, formed when positrons bind together with antiprotons. The results are published online today by the journal Nature

Belief-O-Matic
Even if YOU don't know what faith you are, Belief-O-Matic knows. Answer 20 questions about your concept of God, the afterlife, human nature, and more, and Belief-O-Matic will tell you what religion (if any) you practice...or ought to consider practicing.
Warning: Belief-O-Matic assumes no legal liability for the ultimate fate of your soul.

Study: Brain misfires may cause 'out-of-body experiences'
A study suggests the oft-reported sensation of leaving the body during a brush with death may have a simple explanation in the body itself.
These "out-of-body" and "near-death" experiences -- in which people resuscitated on the operating table speak of being drawn toward a brilliant light, or looking down on their own bodies -- may be influenced by a portion of the brain misfiring under stress, the study suggests.

Guerrilla News Network
Excellent source for alternative media. Highly reccomended: The Most Dangerous Game
The truth behind Nazis and U.S. psyops.

Movies That Reflect Reality?
This site contains links to the infamous Lone Gunman episode, aired Feb. 2000, that involves a passenger jet being remotely hijacked to be flown into the World Trade Center, NY. Eerily prophetic or a did somebody know something? Alternative links, in case the site is busy, here - Real or Windows Media.

Why Alfred E Neuman made J Edgar Hoover and his boys so raving Mad
Newly released files show that the satirical magazine MAD enraged the FBI, which did not hesitate to send round its heavies.

TELETUBBIES: Nazi Hybrid Greys in Disguise
What you are about to read is the most serious and observative article about the Teletubbies on the web. If you think the Teletubbies are likeable characters in an equally likeable TV show, then read on, for you may never let your toddler watch it again.
The Teletubbies is America's number one children's show, with 16 million viewers and over 2 billion dollars in merchandise sales. Critics rave about the show's "excellent" content and educational value, especially for a show aimed at one year-olds.
You know what? This person is not kidding.

Masturbate for Peace: Using Masturbation to End War
The title says it all, I'm not gonna touch it. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!

Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation.
[Suggested by Jim/chiaro]

PhysicsWeb - The Casimir effect: a force from nothing
The attractive force between two surfaces in a vacuum - first predicted by Hendrik Casimir over 50 years ago - could affect everything from micromachines to unified theories of nature.
What happens if you take two mirrors and arrange them so that they are facing each other in empty space? Your first reaction might be "nothing at all". In fact, both mirrors are mutually attracted to each other by the simple presence of the vacuum. This startling phenomenon was first predicted in 1948 by the Dutch theoretical physicist Hendrik Casimir while he was working at Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven on - of all things - colloidal solutions (see box). The phenomenon is now dubbed the Casimir effect, while the force between the mirrors is known as the Casimir force.[Suggested by Jim/chiaro]

Our Christian President-George W. Bush- 9-11
Portraits of "Dubbya" made of of tiny thumbnails of Jesus, on sale at E-Bay. I can't even think of a snappy tag-line for this one, it's just too weird.

Gearheads: The Geeks, the History, and the Killer Machines Behind the New Sport of Robot Combat
Professional wrestling meets Star Wars. There’s really no other way to describe the mind-blowing phenomenon of robot combat that is sweeping the nation. From NASA control rooms to high-school gyms, from U.S. military bases to software barons’ basements, obsessive technophiles are toiling away their spare time—and then some—to build the next generation of robots that square off inside the ring in rampantly popular television shows like Battlebots and Robot Wars.

'Mile High Club' Forces Airplane Refit
Virgin Atlantic Airways is to replace tables in its newest planes because passengers have broken them during illicit trysts, the Sun newspaper said on Monday.

Ten Thousand Monkeys
Take a million monkeys, put 'em at a million typewriters, give 'em a million years, and supposedly you end up with "War and Peace", or "Hamlet", or some such ... We wanted a million, but could only get licenses and collars for ten thousand, so if you're willing to sacrifice Shakespeare for Jackie Collins ... read on.

NEWS of the WEIRD - Current News
Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird

{fray}
The fray is a place for people who believe the web is about personal expression and a new kind of art people like us and people like you. Share your personal stories with a virtual campfire.

Personalized Action Figures at AndGor Toy Company
AndGor Toy Co., Inc. has a team of in-house sculptors trained at a professional level with over half a century of sculpting experience combined! AndGor Toy Company can make YOU into the Action Figure of your choice, wearing whatever you want from casual clothes to formal wear, authentic military gear, football uniform, and more!
We can create a custom figure of ANY person you wish, including Mascots for companies and/or sporting events.
Excellent for Comic Book Writers and Artists, who would like to see their creations come to life in true 3-D form. Also an excellent idea for creating life like counterparts of your Role Playing Game Characters as well!

HOW I LEARNED TO MASTURBATE AND LOVE THE WAR BY WHITEY BEIGE
Part 3 in the ongoing Austrailin Outback Expedition series.
We interrupt the retelling of my Australia vacation for this very special episode of Blossom.
Over the past week the nation has been on super duper, ultra excelsior, red panty, terror alert and absolutely nothing has happened.
The only thing that has come close to resembling an act of terrorism was Sunday’s Anna Nicole Smith Show. Just the sight of that woman in a belly shirt makes me want to volunteer for a suicide mission.

Machinima.com: shooting film in virtual reality
Introducing the revolutionary real-time unreality that is Machinima: shooting film in virtual reality.
An artform come out of nowhere. Films that use computer game technology and look like "Toy Story". Zero-budget film-makers making films that would stretch the biggest of Hollywood studios.
That's Machinima.
In short, a film made using Machinima (Ma-sheen-EH-ma) is a film made with computer-generated graphics, similar to those you can see on the television or on film in titles like "Antz" and "Toy Story". However, unlike those features, Machinima uses graphical techniques originally developed for computer games to generate its visuals, meaning that a film-maker with a home PC can create feature-length epics that would require millions of dollars to make using traditional CGI (Computer Ganerated Imagery) techniques, thanks to the fact that the Machinima film-maker can make his or her film in real time, rather than painstakingly animating frame by frame.

SPIKED!: CNN Refuses to Run Connie Chung's Skull & Bones Broadcast
CNN spiked Connie Chung's widely-publicized "expose" on Yale University's Order of Skull & Bones, chapter 322, which counts among its membership President George W. Bush and his father and grandfather before him, and influential aide and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, and Connie Chung ain't talking.

How To Live In A Simulation*
If you might be living in a simulation then all else equal you should care less about others, live more for today, make your world look more likely to become rich, expect to and try more to participate in pivotal events, be more entertaining and praiseworthy, and keep the famous people around you happier and more interested in you.

Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?
This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the transhumanist dogma that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.

We're living in a Matrix ... possibly
Swedish philosopher considers artificial consciousness
A Swedish philosopher at Yale University believes there is a one-in-four chance that we are living inside a computer - like the one in movie smash The Matrix.
Dr Nick Bostrom, who will conduct research at Oxford University later this year, has outlined his ideas in a forthcoming paper submitted to the journal Philosophical Quarterly.
If this and the lst two articles interest you, here's a nice repository of article links and discussions.