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Man Sentenced for 'Burning Bush' Comment

A man who made a remark about a "burning Bush" during the president's March 2001 trip to Sioux Falls was sentenced Friday to 37 months in prison.

Humphreys said he got into a barroom discussion in nearby Watertown with a truck driver. A bartender who overheard the conversation realized the president was to visit Sioux Falls the next day and told police Humphreys talked about a "burning Bush" and the possibility of someone pouring a flammable liquid on Bush and lighting it.

"I said God might speak to the world through a burning Bush," Humphreys testified during his trial. "I had said that before and I thought it was funny." -NWD

Underground rising

From Tarantino to Spike Jonze, from "Memento" to "Y Tu Mamá," we're living through an independent film explosion. Salon introduces Indie Film -- a new section dedicated to cinematic life beyond the blockbuster. (Use the free "day pass" to access the article).

Eclipse brings claim of medieval African observatory

Viewers of the total solar eclipse in Southern Africa early on Wednesday have also had their eyes opened by second startling event - newly released evidence that a medieval African site was an astronomical observatory.

Great Zimbabwe, built in about 1200 AD is a perplexing UN world heritage site. At its heart is the Great Enclosure - a wall comprised of over 5000 cubic metres of stone and marking a perimeter 240 metres in length. Archaeologists had assumed it was once a royal residence.

Homegrown Border Patrol?

Chris Simcox, owner of the Tombstone Tumbleweed, a weekly newspaper in Tombstone, AZ, made headlines when he issued call for an armed citizen's militia to patrol the border against "invasion" from Mexicans illegally entering the U.S. Simcox exhorted Tombstonians: "Concerned Citizens turn off the T.V. Join together to protect your country in a time of war!"

Simcox apparently sees the militia as an adjunct to the Department of Homeland Security, telling another Arizona newspaper that the citizen militia will be called "Civil Homeland Defense Force". He told reporters that militia members will be patrolling public lands instead of private property as he initially proposed. Members will be armed and patrolling water stations set up by humanitarian groups, Simcox said.

Meanwhile Tuscon's Derechos Humanos (Human Rights) Coalition noting that several murders of Mexicans as they attempted to cross the border have yet to be prosecuted, says that racist groups are behind recent calls to protect the United States from terrorists. And that "the hate mongers wrap themselves up in the flag and shamelessly exploit the anti-terrorism atmosphere of the country."

Inside 'Charlie Kaufman'

SO THERE'S THIS SCREENWRITER WITH A GALLOPING case of writer's block, which he resolves by inserting himself and his problem into a story he's adapting for some big-time producers. That's the premise of Adaptation, but please don't leave the building yet. The movie is not another in the lengthening line of whiny screeds about gallant screenwriters oppressed by executive scum — in this movie, the writer has only himself to blame for his paralysis. Nor, though it spawns plots and meta-plots like a bunny rabbit, is it one of those irritating hipster ur-narratives that keeps winking at you to make sure you get that this is not a true story.

Cloned cells may 're-boot' immune system - Dec. 6, 2002

"Cloning technology may someday be able to give patients "re-booted"
immune systems, offering new treatments for diseases ranging from
pneumonia to multiple sclerosis, researchers said on Thursday."

"The idea is to help a patient grow new cells and tissues using
his or her own cells, eventually leading to "grow-your-own"
transplants and other treatments."

"Lanza, along with other scientists in the field, fears Congress
may soon block the research. One of two competing bills would ban
all cloning research involving humans, while the second would allow
work such as Lanza's." -Chiaroscuro

Picture this...

...photographer named Mike Maginnis was arrested, for simply taking pictures of buildings in an area where Vice President Cheney was residing.

...told that his "suspicious activities" made him a threat to national security, he would be charged as a terrorist under the USA-PATRIOT act.

A Secret Service agent tried to make Maginnis admit that he was taking the photographs to analyze weaknesses in the Vice President's security entourage and "cause terror and mayhem."

When Maginnis refused to admit to being any sort of terrorist, the Secret Service agent called him a "raghead collaborator" and a "dirty pinko faggot." (via)

The KAOS banning attempt

KAOS 14 was first published online on July 22, 2002. Since that time there have been a number of attempts to get it taken off the Internet, so controversial do its contents appear to be in the eyes of some.

On August 20, 2002, the KAOS supplement was temporarily suppressed due to a complaint by a person or organisation that did not wish this material to be in the public domain.

The 69-page supplement concerns 'The Black Lodge of Santa Cruz', and is a remarkable personal testimony of occult experience in a magical Order - the Caliphate OTO, renowned for use of legal muscle against both publishers and web hosting companies, much like the Scientologists.

For those who haven't heard of the now infamous 'Black Lodge', until the publication of this important document rumours abounded concerning a clandestine initiatory body formed near the heart of the Caliphate OTO in 1990, known as 'The Black Lodge of Santa Cruz'. The supplement to KAOS 14 is written by a direct witness and participant in these events, which involved Enochian operations that threatened the power base of the Caliphate.

We at KAOS, it has to be said, expected the work to be controversial, but were surprised by the petty strategies person or persons unknown used to try to ensure no-one would be able to read it. Initially, the supplement was moved to another server, while KAOS itself remained on the original website unchallenged.

On October 17 2002, however, the entire KAOS website was closed down by BT Internet and the account terminated, either as a result of a further objection by the original complainant or by someone else who feels aggrieved by what I and others have written.

Forewarned by the initial partially successful suppression attempt, we had taken the precaution of setting up mirror sites and so when KAOS was closed down we simply switched to the following redirection URL and pointed it at one of the mirrors.

The document in question currently resides here. (PDF)
Editorial note: We are not endorsing or condeming this document, merely passing it on.

Earliest New World writing revealed

The discovery of a fist-sized ceramic cylinder and fragments of engraved plaques has pushed back the earliest evidence of writing in the Americas by at least 350 years to 650 BC.

Rolling the cylinder printed symbols indicating allegiance to a king - a striking difference from the Old World, where the oldest known writing was used for keeping records by the first accountants.

Neuromarketing: The Mind is a Terrible Ad Space to Waste

In a hospital in Atlanta, researchers are paying people to lie inside MRI machines and look at pictures of products while the machine snaps images of their brains.

The Brighthouse Institute for Thought Sciences claims it's closing the gap between business and science — with the goal of getting us to behave the way corporations want us to.

Neuromarketing was born at Harvard University. In the late 1990s, marketing professor Gerry Zaltm and his associate began scanning people's brains for corporations.

Then there's our "old friends" Mark Joyner and his Mind Control Marketing, NeuroPop: the brainchild of a team out of Brown University who took research conducted by the government and intelligence organizations and turned it into a advertising technology for the likes of McDonalds and other "heavies", Woody Norris who we can't "get out of our head" for some reason, Novels that we've been reading that would seem, to the paranoid, to have a message embedded within them...
Screed began at NWD, taken up here. Pass it on.

ETs we have known and loved?
Extra-Terrestrial Contact- A presentation and analysis of the evidence, and an exploration of the implications.

The evidence that the earth is being visited by at least one extraterrestrial civilization is extensive both in scope and detail. In it's totality, it comprises a body of evidence which at the very least supports the general assessment that extraterrestrial life has been detected, and that a vigorous program of research and serious diplomatic initiatives is warranted. -- Dr. Steven Greer, CSETI (Center for the Study of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence)

This website aims to provide an overview of the phenomenon, including a scientific presentation and analysis of the evidence, as well as to serve as a web guide to quality information available on the internet, like UFOs In European Art UFO's in 15th Century Art

Is that Desert Storm or Shield or Club Med?

If you caught the Conflict: Desert Storm commercial posing as a newscast you know that the US has invaded Iraq in order to eliminate Saddam. As the live action dissolves into obvious pixellated 3D video game characters you come to realize you have been duped.

In this article, Andrew Leonard asks the question, What do they want us to buy? When you can't tell games from reality, what are we to believe?

The question becomes ever more complex, and the answer ever more fluid, as entertainment -- games and movies and books and music -- blends into one digital soup, reflecting all experience.

Double, double, war and trouble, military pagans make the cauldron bubble

Small groups of witches, Druids, Shaman and Wiccans make up the more than 10,000 estimated pagans in the US armed forces, according to the Military Pagan Network, a support group.

Thom Hartmann

If you haven't heard of Thom Hartmann (http://www.thomhartmann.com), it's time you did. He's the proponent of the Hunter/Farmer theory as an explanation of the phenomenon of AD/HD in our society. But his interests charge all over the planet. I heard him when he came to an AD/HD conference in Jerusalem in 2000. He's something extraordinary.

Take a look at this excerpt - there's more where this came from.

SD: The Age of Awareness is about building community and re-connecting with our divinity -individually and collectively - yet we live in such a fractious, segmented social, spiritual and community situation. What dynamic is lacking the most in our society?

T.H.: Connection. The loss of connection to tribe is probably the single biggest cultural psychopathology we have. We Americans of European ancestry were de-tribalized by the Celts 3,000 years ago, de-tribalized by the Romans 2,000 years ago and de-tribalized by the Christians 1,000 years ago. We've become the hungry ghosts the Native Americans refer to as people without a tribe. The peoples who have managed to maintain their tribes, such as the Jews and Gypsies, are consistently and aggressively attacked. We crave tribe so much that we can't stand to see anyone else living it, so we become jealous and violently aggressive.

http://www.sierradovecenter.com/ezine/July/features/hartmann.html via deoxy

Let the games begin- Virtual Snowball Fight

 \\     \  | |  /    // 

 \\\    \\      //    /// 

 \\\  #########   /// 

 \\   ###         ###   // 

 --  ##               ##   -- 

 --  ##  squish!!  ##  -- 

 --  ##             ##  -- 

//   ###         ###   \\ 

///  ########  \\\ 

 ///    //     \\   \\\ 

 //     /  | |  \   \\ 

 /     |     \ 

~You have just been hit with an e-mail snow ball!~

It's the start of.....

A Virtual Snow Ball Fight!!

One rule to this game.... You can NOT hit someone who has already hit you!

Now...

Go out there and get as many people as you can, before they get you!

I got you first! and you can't get me back!

Nanee - Nanee - Nanee! Neener - Neener - Neener!
hehe

Global Consciousness Project -- consciousness, group consciousness, mind

The Global Consciousness Project (GCP) is an international collaboration created in 1998 to study the subtle reach of human consciousness in the physical world. We maintain a global network of random event generators (REGs) in more than 50 locations, from Alaska to Fiji, on all continents, and in nearly every time zone. The world map above has a bright spot for each of the host sites.

Because the structure of the network bears some resemblance to an Electroencephalograph, or EEG, our primary software architect (Greg Nelson, Princeton '91) suggested we might call it an Electrogaiagram, or EGG.
But it is important to be clear that we are not measuring electrical pulses
The REGs generate a sequence of bits of information. They take samples from quantum-level electronic noise like static hiss, and convert it to a fundamentally unpredictable sequence of ones and zeroes.
We call the random event generators "eggs" and collect their continuous output over the Internet with a "basket" program running on a server in Princeton.

Each egg produces one "trial" every second. A trial is the sum of 200 bits, essentially the equivalent of flipping 200 coins and counting the heads. At the present time there are over 50 eggs in the network, and their output certainly looks random if displayed without much statistical processing.

When we plot the raw data from a single egg, we see the "white noise" that is produced by a random source. It is like the static one hears between stations on a radio. The leftmost figure below shows the second-by-second trial values, varying around the expected mean of 100. The next two pictures show the data for all eggs during a full day. The middle image is superimposed traces for 48 eggs, plotting the sequence of average values calculated for 15-minute periods (900 trials). Then the same data are shown as a cumulative deviation trace for each egg, and we begin to see how differences from expectation might be visualized using statistical methods.

PSYCHODYNE

"Hello, Psychodyne? I'm ready to take the first step towards personal happiness and professional fufillment. Please send me your 'NOT PARANOID ENOUGH' pin today!" Via Post-Atomic

Cthulhuoid Copulations
Sex with CTHULHU? Frater AshT-Chozar-Ssaratu, Miskatonic Alchemical Expedition

About 2 decades ago, I began to work consciously with the energies/entities of Lovecraft’s mythos. At first I felt like a fieldmouse in a world populated by owls, hawks & rattlesnakes. But the farther I got in my explorations, the more I came to realize that my personal relationship with any energy or entity is one which is uniquely determined by me & the energy/entity in question – regardless of racial or ecological stereotypes. - via christian93

Ten Thousand Monkey's Turns 39!

Greetings from the wide ol' world. This issue of M10K is brought to you by the letter M, the number 12, and the classic Roger Miller song "King of the Road" (Mostly cause I'm feeling a little like the ol' King of the Road myself these days).

Take a little ramble with M10K why don'cha? Travel through time ... Texas ... Austria ... Italy ... depression ... alcohol ... pills ... spills ... chills ... the human soul laid bare like a roadmap (who said that?) and the mental landscape of a whole barrel of our finest monkeys! We promise to get you back before lunch time.

Eyeballing Total Information Awareness

The SF Weekly's column by Matt Smith in the Dec 3 issue points out that there may be some information that John M. and Linda Poindexter of 10 Barrington Fare, Rockville, MD, 20850, may be missing in their pursuit of total information awareness. He suggests that people with information to offer should phone 1 301 424 6613 to speak with that corrupt official and his wife. Neighbors Thomas E. Maxwell, 67, at 8 Barringon Fare ( 1 301 251 1326), James F. Galvin, 56, at 12 ( 1 301 424 0089), and Sherrill V. Stant (nee Knight) at 6, may also lack some information that would be valuable to them in making decisions -- decisions that could affect the basic civil rights of every American.

Joe Coleman: Crazy Like a Saint

Joe Coleman's wisdom, he would have you believe, is the wisdom of lunatics and saints, of madmen, serial killers, porno queens and sideshow freaks.

He is an artist engaged in laying bare our fascination with such sordid and repugnant archetypes. He makes it a point to stand outside polite society, a vantage point all the more disturbing because he is neither mad nor possessed, isolated nor out of touch, but merely -- and deliberately -- heretical as hell.

After more than two decades on the fringes of the New York art scene, Norwalk-born artist Joe Coleman, 43, takes his first "legitimate" stage at the Wadsworth Atheneum's MATRIX gallery later this month.

From weblogsky: Joe Coleman is a powerful visionary and an "outsider artist" if there ever was one, but he's being excluded from New York's Outsider Art Fair, evidently because he tries a little too hard to make a living with his art. Sign the petition to oppose Coleman's exclusion from the January event.

Digital image stored in single molecule

An image composed of over 1000 bits of information can be stored in the atoms of a single molecule, US researchers have shown.

Bing Fung and colleagues at the University of Oklahoma found that the 19 hydrogen atoms in a lone liquid crystal molecule can store at least 1024 bits of information. The data are stored in the complex interaction of the protons' magnetic moments.

Fung hopes the technique, dubbed "molecular photography", could one day be used to pack massive amounts of digital information into a tiny space but admits that the process is currently experimental. "It's a very, very first step towards using nuclear spins for molecular information processing," he told New Scientist.

In their experiments, the researchers used a molecule to store a black and white image, 32 pixels square. The image was encoded in binary 1s and 0s that can easily be processed by a computer.

LANDMARK DECISION CLEARS WAY FOR FIRST COMMERCIAL LUNAR FLIGHT

TransOrbital, Inc. has become the first private company in the history of space flight to win approval from the U.S. government to explore, photograph, and land on the moon. The company expects to launch its Trailblazer Mission from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan within the next 9-12 months.

The approvals and licensing by the U.S. State Department and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) position TransOrbital as the only company presently authorized by the U.S. Government to return to the moon. Once launched, the Trailblazer will provide stunning, high-definition (HDTV) video and maps of the lunar surface (at 1 meter resolution), as well as new images of earth-rises over lunar craters. Additionally, the Trailblazer mission should provide the opportunity to view the equipment left behind from past Apollo and Russian landings. The mission will culminate with the delivery of a time capsule containing personal cargo from Earth (such as messages and photographs), and a final "barnstorming" video as the probe impacts the lunar service.

The media collected during the mission will provide TransOrbital with an array of content vital to future scientific and exploratory endeavors, as well as educational and entertainment uses.

Coming soon: Celebrity Detox

Celebrities will be shown vomiting and analysing their bowel movements in a new Channel 5 reality show that promises to offer the ultimate form of exposure for struggling C-list stars.

The one-off programme is a spin-off from Detox Camp, a little-watched documentary screened on Channel 5 last month. It focused on an island paradise off the coast of Thailand, where over-indulged Westerners are encouraged to swap their home comforts for a "diet" of fasting and enemas

The eyes don't always have it Professor shows how visual cues can deceive

Banks, a professor of optometry and vision science, has devoted much of his career to experiments teasing out just how the eyes and brain put together the puzzle of the visual world. The latest example was detailed in the Nov. 22 issue of Science, showing how the brain is able to juggle two senses at once.

Taken...again
I'm sorry Mr. Spielberg, but haven't we been TAKEN by you before?

Questia - An Online Library of Books and Journals

Questia has over 70,000 books and journal articles, on-line and free.

Scientist plans to create a human mental map -- a database that would contain a log of every human idea

The scope of human ideas is infinite, some might say. But one researcher says he can count them, and he intends to do just that.

Darryl Macer, associate professor at the Institute of Biological Sciences at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, plans to create a human mental map -- a database that would contain a log of every human idea.

Macer formally proposed in the November 14 issue of Nature that researchers from various disciplines, including genetics, sociology and history, meet next year in Japan to discuss the project.

Lindsay's Technical Books

Highest quality books, new and old, for experimenters, inventors, tinkerers, mad scientists, and a very few normal people...

Steven Johnson reviews Pinker's The Blank State

Natural selection doesn't hand down a strict playbook for action--it offers hints and clues instead. We find it easier to learn strategies that are part of our toolbox, while other strategies that weren't adaptive in our ancestral environment don't come so easily to us. You have to go to school to learn how to read, but no one goes to school to learn how to read facial expressions, although it is an incredibly sophisticated art. We're quick to develop phobias about spiders and snakes--which posed a major threat in our ancestral environments--but we rarely develop phobias about much more common twentieth-century killers, like electricity or SUVs. You're vastly more likely to be killed by a car than by a garter snake, but it's the snake that sends chills down your spine, even if you know it's harmless. Those chills are a kind of evolutionary trace memory, a message from the millions of ancestors who survived to pass down their genes partially because they had a useful fear of snakes. -NWD

Scientology could be taught in schools

Scienetologists want children in Camden schools to be taught their beliefs as part of the new curriculum.
And the controversial group, which counts Hollywood stars Tom Cruise and John Travolta among its supporters, also wants pupils to learn about the teachings of the Moonies and Pagans during religious education (RE) lessons when the new school curriculum is introduced in 2003.

Ian Haworth, of the Cult Information Centre, said the move was “potentially hazardous”. He added: “If Scientology is considered a religion in the school curriculum, it will be the first to have a criminal record. NWD

Tattooing robot unveiled at hi-tech trade fair

In Terror War, 2nd Track for Suspects
Those Designated 'Combatants' Lose Legal Protections
(annoying but quick questionnaire before article)

The Bush administration is developing a parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects -- U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike -- may be investigated, jailed, interrogated, tried and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system, lawyers inside and outside the government say.

The elements of this new system are already familiar from President Bush's orders and his aides' policy statements and legal briefs: indefinite military detention for those designated "enemy combatants," liberal use of "material witness" warrants, counterintelligence-style wiretaps and searches led by law enforcement officials and, for noncitizens, trial by military commissions or deportation after strictly closed hearings.

The Tubes (no, not the 80s band).

Here are some ASTOUNDING photos of "tubes" on the surface of Mars. Some of the commentary on the website are reminiscent of Richard Hoagland winner of the Ig® Nobel Prize but if taken with a large grain of salt, the pictures are amazing.
There seem to be two types of tube formations - one type seemingly translucent, and the other with a shiny reflective surface. There are links to the original photos at Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) designs, develops, and operates instruments that fly on robotic spacecraft. The original pictures are quite large in the hi-rez versions, but the Mars Anomaly Research site has posted the best parts.

There are more examples than this, a bit of Googling can find them easily.


"Transparent tubes":
http://marsanomalyresearch.com/01/tubes-article.htm
Source image:
http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/ab1_m04/images/M0400291.html


Reflective tubes:
http://marsanomalyresearch.com/46/realtubesII.htm
Source images:
http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e07_e12/images/E12/E1203186.html
and
http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e07_e12/images/E11/E1103408.html

Report by Chiaroscuro

NASA Breakthrough Method May Lead To Smaller Electronics

NASA scientists have invented a breakthrough biological method to make ultra-small structures that may well be used to produce electronics 10 to 100 times smaller than today's components.

As part of their new method, scientists use modified proteins from 'extremophile' microbes that live in near-boiling, acidic hot springs to grow mesh-like structures so small that an electron microscope is needed to see them. A research article describing the new technique appeared in the Nov. 24 on-line version of the journal Nature Materials (free registration is required) and is scheduled to be published in its December issue.

Hoax Photo Gallery

When Daguerre's discovery of the art of photography was announced to the world in 1839, many scientists, such as Dr. Bird of Philadelphia, found the concept so extraordinary that they insisted the announcement had to be a hoax. Photography was, of course, quite real, but it has proven to be a favorite tool of hoaxers since its invention. What follows are some notorious photographic fakes arranged in chronological order from the Civil War to the present.

TextArc: a visual represention of a text

A TextArc is a visual represention of a text—the entire text (twice!) on a single page. Some funny combination of an index, concordance, and summary, it uses the viewer's eye to help uncover meaning.

License To Chill -- Hackers Hamstring Rights Violators

SUMMARY: International hacker organization issues software license that
allows the group or its licensees to take human rights violators to court.

CROSSHAIRS: This story is important for anyone interested in hacking,
human rights, information security, open-source software, Internet
censorship, international law, international politics, or technology
transfer.