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

Technorati Profile

Guerrilla News Network: Bowling for Columbine
Michael Moore’s new film, “Bowling for Columbine,” is being billed as a documentary about gun violence in America. It is, and it isn’t.
The film, which opens today in Los Angeles and New York, will be familiar, at least stylistically, to anyone who has seen his previous films or TV shows, "TV Nation" and “The Awful Truth.” Moore plays the bumbling crusader, rattling the corporate overlords and comforting the downtrodden. This time the subject is guns, or at least “guns” is where Moore starts. “Bowling for Columbine” is about much more than firearms. As Moore says, “It’s a film about fear.” It’s the story of a nation built on fear, and addicted to aggression.

Art: What's Original, Anyway?
If current copyright laws had been on the books when jazz musicians were borrowing riffs from other artists in the 1930s and Looney Tunes illustrators were creating cartoons in the 1940s, entire art genres such as hip-hop, collage and Pop Art might never have existed.The exhibit, Illegal Art: Freedom of Expression in the Corporate Age, will take place in New York from Nov. 13 to Dec. 6 and in Chicago from Jan. 25 to Feb. 22.

Radio waves could construct buildings in space
Huge buildings could be conjured up in space using nothing more than focused radio waves to push individual components into place. Radio-controlled construction would get around one of the obstacles to colonising space - the need to ferry heavy construction equipment into orbit and support the people who will operate it.

NASA Images Find 1,750,000 Year Old Man-Made Bridge
The NASA Shuttle has imaged a mysterious ancient bridge between India and Sri Lanka, as mentioned in the Ramayana.
The evidence, say experts matter-of-factly, is in the Digital Image Collection.
The recently discovered bridge, currently named as Adam's Bridge and made of a chain of shoals, 30 km long, in the Palk Straits between India and Sri Lanka, reveals a mystery behind it. Via chiaroscuro

John Edward: Hustling the Bereaved; Investigative Files (Skeptical Inquirer November 2001)
Superstar "psychic medium" John Edward is a stand-up guy. Unlike the spiritualists of yore, who typically plied their trade in dark-room séances, Edward and his ilk often perform before live audiences and even under the glare of TV lights. Indeed, Edward (a pseudonym: he was born John MaGee Jr.) has his own popular show on the SciFi channel called Crossing Over, which has gone into national syndication (Barrett 2001; Mui 2001). I was asked by television newsmagazine Dateline NBC to study Edward's act: was he really talking to the dead?
Yeah, yeah. I know, it's CSICOP, but even they screw up and print the truth.

A Film Fest That Transcends Films
"Technology has made moviemaking tools more accessible to artists," said Gregory Cowley, director and curator of the San Francisco-based festival, which runs Wednesday through Saturday at various Bay Area venues. "As a result, the cinematic experience is changing. It's no longer two-dimensional."
Works on exhibit during the festival -- which features screenings, talks, installations and performance pieces by a number of interdisciplinary artists -- range from nightclub-style visuals by Grant Davis (aka VJ Culture) of Dimension7 to Interstice, an immersive sound-and-light installation by Chris Musgrave.

The Evolution of Childrearing: The Emotional Life of Nations
Since the further back in history one goes the lower the level of childrearing, it follows that children in the past grew up in houses of horrors that were like those of dissociated personalities of today. Psychiatric studies have shown that there is a direct correlation between elevated levels of dissociative symptoms—separate alters, depersonalization, derealization—and the amount of early physical, sexual and emotional abuse.1 That the average person before the modern period walked streets full of spirits, demons, gods and other alters is evidence of the dissociation that resulted from their routine abuse and neglect as children. Historical evolution of the psyche, therefore, is the slow, uneven process of integrating fragmented selves into the unified self that is the goal of modern upbringing.

Einhorn defence to invoke paranormal
"In the essay, which was circulated via e-mail to supporters and the media before the Common Pleas Court trial, Einhorn dropped more names than a gossip columnist - from City Councilman W. Thacher Longstreth to futurist Alvin Toffler and a mysterious Prince of Iran. He portrayed himself as a peripatetic '70s activist, involved in the antiwar movement and black empowerment, as well as investigating the CIA and the heroin trade, UFOs, and President John F. Kennedy's assassination. But he explained how his trouble began with his exploration into 'psychotronic mind-control weaponry.' So-called psychotronic weapons, popular in science fiction, allegedly harness telepathic power and radio waves to control and influence people from afar." Via New World Disorder

Serial Mom?
Henrietta Lacks, a Baltimore housewife, died in 1951. Some of her cells did not die. In fact, had they been allowed to grow unchecked, they would have taken over the world by now. As it is, even as they proved invaluable to medical researchers, their baffling ability to regenerate resulted in contamination of three decades of cellular research, costing medical researchers millions of dollars. As far as science can tell, Henrietta's cells will never die. Creepy! Via MetaFilter

Look what Spock is up to
The enduring image of Leonard Nimoy will always be as Spock, the Vulcan science officer from the original Star Trek series, but Nimoy is trying to cultivate a new image with his book of nude photography called Shekhina.
The black-and-white photos feature women in various stages of undress, sometimes wearing prayer shawls. Shekhina, in Jewish mysticism, means the divine female presence, and the photos are Nimoy's search for the goddess in the female form. He is currently on a book tour and the initial response has been wide-ranging.

Food scraps to power bacteria-driven battery
Food scraps once consigned to the compost heap -- or the dog -- could soon be powering a cheap bacteria-driven battery if scientists have their way.Researchers at the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol have developed a microbial fuel cell about the size of a mobile phone that could be powered by organic household waste.

Critical US satellites could be hacked
Commercial satellites used by the US military, secret service and Federal Aviation Authority could be hijacked or disabled by computer hackers, a new government report has warned.
The satellites are typically used for lower classification communications, as well as tracking and telemetry. The report was produced by the US General Accounting Office, an investigative governmental body, and states that the command channels used to control these commercial satellites are insufficiently protected against misuse.

The OFFICIAL Anti-Rave Site! : Idiot Ravers!
The following pages contain photos of those idiotic creatures known as "Ravers" in action. Well, not always "in action"; Sometimes they're pretty much "out of commission" if you catch my drift. Anyway, I'm sure you'll find these photos most interesting. (Bitter little man who didn't get enough X and seX?)

We have no idea what to call this...
Just keep moving your mouse around until you see that you can click, then click, wait a minute and repeat. It goes on for a while before you reach the end. Again, we have no idea WHAT THIS IS.

USAF Acknowledges Beam Weapon Readiness
Directed-energy technology is ready to be used as weaponry and, in a mature state, one device carried by an unmanned aircraft could attack each of 100 targets with 1,000 pulses of energy in a single sortie, says a former director of the U.S. Air Force's high-power microwave program. Via Post Atomic

Hoagland Speaks: The Ruins of Cydonia: DarkPlanet
In an exclusive interview with DarkPlanet, Richard C Hoagland discusses his latest and most controversial findings. Could this be the vindicating proof of extraterrestrial architecture he has sought throughout his career?

The Televisionary Oracle
Scroll to the bottom of this link. The entire book is on-line.

"I'VE SEEN THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN LITERATURE AND ITS NAME IS ROB BREZSNY."
--TOM ROBBINS (author of Another Roadside Attraction, Jitterbug Perfume, Skinny Legs and All, and Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates)

"The Televisionary Oracle is a book so weird it might drive you stark raving sane."
--Robert Anton Wilson

"Like a mutant love-child of Jack Kerouac and Anais Nin, Rob Brezsny writes with devilish humor, spiritual audacity, and erotic intensity. The Televisionary Oracle is a kick-ass gnostic tale. Prepare to be astonished."
--Jay Kinney (author, Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions)

Jersey Devil Consortium
For over 300 years, there have been sightings of a 7-9 foot tall animal with bat wings and hooved feet in the Pine Barrens of Southern New Jersey. In researching this website, we have come across over 50 stories about the Jersey Devil. We want to find them all…so if you have a sighting or story to submit, please indulge us on our Submit Sightings and Stories page.
The Jersey Devil Consortium is also offering $1000 bounty for any legitimate photos of the Jersey Devil. We are also actively seeking any artwork or drawings of the Jersey Devil and will post these as they come to us.

Guilty pleasures: what artists and criminals have in common
One theory suggests that artists and criminals have a lot in common psychologically, such as a disdain for the rules of normalcy and often a primal rage, one which is expressed with creation in one case and violence in the other. Oscar Wilde, who knew about such matters, once opined that there was 'no essential incongruity between crime and culture'. As it happened, Wilde found that a felon's life was an uncultivated affair. Pious citizens spat at him on railway platforms during his journey to Reading Gaol. Once there, he bruised his delicate fingers picking oakum and sewing mailbags. By contrast, Jeffrey Archer fritters away his sentence by driving himself to a local theatre to perform frivolous chores backstage and, rather than needing to swab off spittle, he pauses obligingly for the paparazzi en route. How much more enlightened we are! Or am I alone in illiberally wanting to be told that Archer has been ordered to clean latrines? Via The Null Device

Freezerbox: Wars, Wackos and Warming
It's the end of the world as we know it--and Dick Cheney feels fine.

Smart Mobs
Smart mobs emerge when communication and computing technologies amplify human talents for cooperation. The impacts of smart mob technology already appear to be both beneficial and destructive, used by some of its earliest adopters to support democracy and by others to coordinate terrorist attacks. The technologies that are beginning to make smart mobs possible are mobile communication devices and pervasive computing - inexpensive microprocessors embedded in everyday objects and environments. Already, governments have fallen, youth subcultures have blossomed from Asia to Scandinavia, new industries have been born and older industries have launched furious counterattacks.

Flight Web's STS-112 Flight Day 1 videos to watch Atlantis' launch
Check out the Human Space Flight Web's STS-112 Flight Day 1 videos to watch Atlantis' launch, including the unique External Tank camera views. Also available in the Gallery is STS-112 crew training imagery.

A Cold New World
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope measured the largest object in the solar system seen since the discovery of Pluto 72 years ago. The icy world 2002 LM60, dubbed "Quaoar" by its discoverers, measures 1300 kilometers (km) wide — approximately half the size of Pluto. Just a curious point of light until recently, Quaoar lies a billion km beyond Pluto.

Girlfriend killed in internet rage
A 24-year-old man stabbed his girlfriend to death because he thought she was part of an internet game and sent to kill him.

I had something I wanted to write here but I'm feeling lazy today so I hired these guys
Advertising-consultants-turned-authors Adam Lury and Simon Gibson have just launched a fiction writing company which promises to produce a popular novel on a theme of your choice.
Listen
or
Read

Reading McLuhan
If there's a message of the 'for dummies' age it's that nothing is beyond our grasp. And our desire to believe this is reinforced by trends like usability, which privilege economy over elucidation. No one anticipated it all better than Marshall McLuhan, who whittled big insights into sound bites in order to engage an audience beyond the lecture halls of the University of Toronto. With the help of Tom Wolfe and others, the scholarly McLuhan became a cool media prophet. It was, and still is, a practical strategy in anti-intellectual times. But in the process, much of McLuhan's meaning has been reduced to a one-liner. This has as much to do with the absence of commentary on McLuhan's literary, philosophical and cultural influences as it does with the way his work is taught.

Quantum cryptography takes to the skies
Quantum cryptography keys encoded in photons of light have been transmitted more than 23 kilometres through air, British researchers have announced. They say the breakthrough is an important step towards a global communications system that is completely secure.
Earlier in 2002 a Swiss company managed to send quantum keys over 60 kilometres. But this was through optical fibres, which limits the technology to ground-based transmission. The Los Alamos National Laboratory transmitted a quantum key through 1.6 km of air in 2000.
"Our experiment paves the way for the development of a secure global key-distribution network based on optical links to low-Earth-orbit satellites," says John Rarity, at QinetiQ, the public arm of the UK's defence research agency.

The "Coolest" Contest in the World?
New Scientist brings you the choice of a lifetime.
Live Later and have your body cryogenically preserved. Cryonics - the idea of freezing people when they die ready to be revived and restored to health centuries in the future- has always been controversial. Will it ever work? Here's your chance to find out. If you choose the cryonics prize your body will be frozen at the Cryonics Institute in Michigan upon your death.
Live Now and jet off to Hawaii with a friend. If you'd rather leave the future to itself New Scientist will fly you and a friend to Hawaii for a week to visit the world's highest observatory. Look back millions of years by viewing the stars from Mauna Kea.
It's your choice.

Why We Should Invade Iraq Right Now!
Requires the Flash Plug-in and a sense of humor.

With the ever decreasing rights of the individual in the USA, one has to wonder how long it will be before jackbooted thugs kick in the doors of our favorite sources of information. Of course there will always be some who will risk the consequences and keep spreading the information virus, samisdat style. Maybe a black Internet will spring up, piggy-backing on something new that will come along.
Just remember, even revolution can be fun.