Your Freewill Astrology for this Week
Aries	Libra
Taurus	Scorpio
Gemini	Sagittarius
Cancer	Capricorn
Leo	Aquarius
Virgo	Pisces

Technorati Profile

Taking a little Sabbatical
We'll be on a short Sabbatical (sans goats and broomsticks) until Monday. In the meantime, we suggest you amuse yourself by reading through the archives for things that you may have missed or check out this story sent in by an anonymous reader of this site. You can also catch up on the ongoing saga of Whitey Beige's Australian Outback Expedition. When we come back, we'll be reviewing some alternative music sites, alternative on-line bookstores and alternative news sites.

Banksy and the Weapons of Mass Distraction
Let Us Spray
In the true spirit of Funct, a guru of design culture, Jamie Reid, is teamed with his maverick graffiti-art disciple Banksy. For this collaboration, the writing is truly on the wall. “I love fucking with everyday stuff, Walls make great canvases.’ A simple philosophy for a man doing something some one judge to be a simple art: spray painting graffiti. Banksy’s speciality is stencils. He encapsulates potent messages in tasty graphics. Some are perverse and abstract ­three sharks circling round a shopping trolley filled with goldfish ­ others are straight to the point: a monkey wearing a sandwich board with ‘Laugh now, but one day we’ll be in charge’ emblazoned across it. Be sure, Banksy does not mince his words.
For those of you who didn't know, Jamie Reid is god and that's that.

Directors guild sues over editing of movies
The Directors Guild of America is suing more than a dozen companies that delete scenes depicting violence, sex and profanity from Hollywood films, saying the process violates federal copyright law.
The editing is "a direct frontal assault on all aspects of ownership and creativity," said Jay Roth, national executive director of the guild.
In a federal lawsuit, the guild is requesting an injunction against 13 companies that either rent movies that have been edited or sell software that allows consumers, through computers or DVD players, to edit movies themselves.
I wonder if they will begin to sue people over those infamous Internet edits as well?

Book Mobile with a Twist
The Internet Archive volunteers have put about 9,000 public domain books on its site, and now they're driving around the United States in a high-tech bookmobile where people can link to the archive via satellite, download the book of their choice, print it out, and take it home to read. And yes, it's all free. The Internet Archive bookmobile will make its first visit to an East Palo Alto school Sept. 30 and will stop at numerous other schools, libraries, and nursing homes during its cross-country trek. "We want to remind people that when things like books enter the public domain, they become a major public good and a public utility," Gelman says.
Great idea. Now if someone would only take some of these text books and make some free versions that print nicely.

Millionaires Lining Up to Buy Personal Gene Maps
A service to map a person's entire genetic code is being offered by America's genome entrepreneur Craig Venter, according to the Sunday Times.
The newspaper said that for 400,000 (US$621,500), a person would get details of their entire genetic code within 1 week. "Armed with such information, the individual would be able to check for mutations linked with illnesses such as cancer and Alzheimer's," the Sunday Times reported.
If they can make maps, can they make a warning sticker for certain types of people as well? Maybe one that reads; "Warning, the surgeon general has determined that reproducing with this person can be hazardous to and even fatal to your gene strain."

Fight Club author, Chuck Palahniuk shows us what's on his reading list this month. If you didn't get a preorder version like Chuck, don't despair, there's plenty more where that came from.

Marilyn Manson Exhibits 'Grotesque' Art in L.A.
Shock-rocker Marilyn Manson, infamous for ripping up Bibles and invoking Satan on stage, is showcasing another side of his twisted mind with a Hollywood art exhibit dubbed "The Golden Age of Grotesque." Colorful watercolors of emaciated souls and grisly corpses greeted celebrities such as actor Nicolas Cage and his new wife, Lisa Marie Presley, at a launch party on Thursday.

You're Too Fat: NY Passes Obesity Prevention Act
New York has passed an Obesity Prevention Act aimed at trimming its health budget by trimming obese people's waistlines. More than three million New Yorkers are obese.
The American Obesity Association estimates the cost of obesity to public health systems is US $100 Billion per year.
Is a state within ethical boundaries spending taxpayer money to come up with 'fitness' programs targeted at only 20% of its citizens? Should obese people be required to lose weight so the public health industry can save money? Or should obese people be given protected minority status making them eligible for federal anti-discrimination protection, thus rendering laws like this New York Act unconstitutional?

Speed of Light on a Radio Shack Budget: Speed of light broken with basic lab kit
Electric signals can be transmitted at least four times faster than the speed of light using only basic equipment that would be found in virtually any college science department.
Scientists have sent light signals at faster-than-light speeds over the distances of a few metres for the last two decades - but only with the aid of complicated, expensive equipment. Now physicists at Middle Tennessee State University have broken that speed limit over distances of nearly 120 metres, using off-the-shelf equipment costing just $500.

The Cultural Anarchist vs. the Hollywood Police State Free Subscription Required
A Stanford Professor Is One Supreme Court Decision Away From Ending Copyrights on Thousands of Movies, Books and Songs.

¤ c i r c l e m a k e r s ¤
Presented for your consideration: a site that claims to be the home of the cropcircle creators. Even if it's a hoax or a Simulacra ala Baudrillard, it's a nicely designed site. We particularly like the T-Shirts and their ability to stimulate hot debate at parties.

Entangled clouds raise hope of teleportation
Clouds of trillions of atoms have for the first time been linked by quantum "entanglement" - that spooky, almost telepathic link between distant particles. The feat opens new possibilities for quantum communication systems and sci-fi-style teleporting of objects from one place to another.
The everyday view of atoms is of solid, independent objects a bit like billiard balls. But according to quantum theory, atoms are far less concrete entities.
Atoms can be persuaded to interact with each other so that events affecting one instantly affect another - no matter how far apart they are. Dubbed entanglement, this could open the way to superfast quantum communications systems and ways of teleporting objects by instantly transferring their properties from place to place.
Before now scientists only managed to entangle a few atoms close together, raising a question mark over the practicality of quantum technology. But now a team at the University of Aarhus in Denmark has entangled two clouds of trillions of caesium atoms. The method should work for very distant clouds.

JUST NOT CRICKET
Hate cricket? It's American, it's violent, and it's definitely Just Not Cricket. The perfect antidote for those Brits bored with watching England lose at their own game!

sodaconstructor
Looking at the fluid, lifelike way these creatures walk and roll and slink across the screen you might think that there must be some very complicated stuff going on behind the scenes. Well fear not, it's actually very simple. it only looks complicated because lots of simple bits are working together. Play with some of the ready made creatures or practice building your own and you'll be surprised by how many different lifelike moving creations you can make by getting all the simple bits to work together.