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

Technorati Profile

Nasa shuttle lost on re-entry

The US space shuttle Columbia has broken up soon after re-entering the Earth's atmosphere and all seven crew aboard are presumed dead. Shuttle Columbia, carrying the first Israeli astronaut and six Americans, apparently disintegrated this morning en route to a landing at Cape Canaveral. Debris was seen falling to earth over north Texas.

17 years ago, this same week: On January 28th, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, killing all seven crew members.

Shuttle Astronauts, RIP; Space Program, Too?

Dirtbag of the Year award goes here (This morning at 10:00 am, there was ONE item in this category. Now there's 68 PAGES worth?).

White House Cancels Poetry Symposium
FEAR THE POET

In a obvious attempt to head off this action, the White House said Wednesday it postponed a poetry symposium because of concerns that the event would be politicized. Some poets had said they wanted to protest military action against Iraq.

The symposium on the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman was scheduled for Feb. 12. No future date has been announced.

Note: LAME! Gotta watch out for those SPIES ya know...

Addendum: Nobel Laureates Sign Against a War Without International Support

Molecular Expressions: Science, Optics and You - Powers Of 10
Powers of Ten

View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons. | Via Aberrant News

The Incestuous Linkage of Being
Moebius Trippin' the Body Eclectic

Why thank you Warren. We like it too. ;-)

The Net is cutting into TV time, study finds

Television executives have more to fear than a future filled with gross-out reality shows. The Internet is rapidly eroding television viewing hours and emerging as a powerful information medium in its own right, according to a study being released today by the University of California-Los Angeles.

In the same way that television eclipsed radio as the primary medium for entertainment and information, the Internet poses a major threat to television.

"The thing that's easy to prove is that Internet users watch less television,'' said Jeffrey I. Cole, director of UCLA Center for Communication Policy, which conducted the study. ``What we've been trying to see is does their Internet time come out of television time? The early indications are pretty clear that it does.'' [MORE]

VeriChip Pre-Registration

From their site: VeriChip, the world’s first subdermal personal verification technology, announces a special, introductory pre-registration program. Sign up today to be among the first in the world to “Get Chipped.”
We invite you to fill out the pre-registration form below to qualify for this special introductory offer for the first 100,000 registrants and all qualified ADS Shareholders.

Note: You're frickin' kiddin' me, right?

Five Degrees of Osama

In December, President Bush named Thomas Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, chairman of an independent commission examining the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But FORTUNE has learned that Kean appears to have a bizarre link to the very terror network he's investigating--al Qaeda.

Here's how the dots connect: Kean is a director of petroleum giant Amerada Hess, which in 1998 formed a joint venture--known as Delta Hess--with Delta Oil, a Saudi Arabian company, to develop oil fields in Azerbaijan. One of Delta's backers is Khalid bin Mahfouz, a shadowy Saudi patriarch married to one of Osama bin Laden's sisters. Mahfouz, who is suspected of funding charities linked to al Qaeda, is even named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by families of Sept. 11 victims. True, Hess is hardly the only company to cross paths with Mahfouz: He has shown up in dealings with, among others, ultra-secretive investment firm Carlyle Group and BCCI, the lender toppled by fraud in 1992. [MORE]

MORNING CUP OF CHICHA

daily diversions
-ten young editors to watch
-good use of mouse-over (we're already calling this one, "upon further examination")
-airlinemeals.net
-spirit photography
-japanese slides
-I'm the last one on the net to post this link. But here it is: the Tard Blog.

Note: Cup of Chicha is one of my favorite new blogs. Check out this woman's writing (roll across the cups at the top). Fresh, raw and honest.

Light Particles Are Duplicated More Than a Mile Away Along Fiber

Employing a facet of quantum mechanics that Albert Einstein called "spooky action at a distance," scientists have taken particles of light, destroyed them and then resurrected copies more than a mile away.

Previous experiments in so-called quantum teleportation moved particles of light about a yard. The findings could aid the sending of unbreakable coded messages, which is limited to a few tens of miles.

The new experiment used longer wavelengths of light than earlier ones, letting the scientists copy the light through standard glass fiber found in fiber optic cables.

"The central issue is to move to telecom fibers and telecom wavelengths and telecom technology," said Dr. Nicolas Gisin, a physics professor at the University of Geneva and the senior author of an article today in the journal Nature. "This then allows us to go the long distance."

The Adventures of Bob Johnson: Enemy of the State





That's some f*cked-up sh*t right there. That's what that is...

| Via Post Atomic/NWD

Ten Thousand Monkeys-43

Is it cold in here or is it just me? So do you think they put Valentine's day in the middle of February, because it has to be the most miserable of the months and it needed something to spruce it up? Or just because that's when the greeting card companies needed the biggest boost to their business?

Well, whichever answer, ya'll's just gonna literally fall in LOVE with this issue of Ten Thousand Monkeys (OK, OK, so not my best segue ... I know, I know. Gimme a break, my fingers are freezing here!) Really though, we do kinda have a VDay inspired theme this week ... OK, you have to shove a little to get them all into that package, but there's love there ... suuuuure!

As always, check it out. Let us know what you think (even if it's "I love you THIS much").

What is the Real State of the Union?
Atlantic On-Line

At kabuki performances in Japan audiences sometimes exclaim "Matte mashita!" during crucial points in the drama. In context this means something like "Here it comes!" or "This is what we've been waiting for!" and it greets the best-known lines in the play. If American theatergoers followed the same custom, people would yell "Matte mashita!" when they heard "To be or not to be ..." in Hamlet or "I'll be back" in a Terminator movie.

In American political culture, which displays some of the same affection for formulaic stagecraft, the theatrical highlight of the year is the State of the Union address. Presidents have presented Congress with reports on the state of national affairs since the republic's beginning, as required by the Constitution. But since Woodrow Wilson established the modern custom of a President's delivering the report in person, in a speech to a special session of Congress, the State of the Union address has evolved into the main kabuki-like ceremony in our national politics. [MORE]

Nano Publishing, Especially Blogs, Taking Shape
Dan Gilmore

The Guardian: New biz on the blog. A growing number of entrepreneurs, media types and marketers have taken up blogging, in all senses of the word. And as they crank out their own daily contributions and links, they're starting to see blogging as a way to reach out to and research opinion formers, as a lesson in online media, and ultimately as a place they might eventually make a little money.

It's easier than ever to start. All the usual tools are getting better, and now some big players are putting their stakes into the ground. Tripod has launched blogging as a service. AOL is widely rumored to be doing so soon, and if Microsoft doesn't build blogging into its software I will be utterly astonished.
Add Really Simple Syndication and other aggregation tools, and this all gets powerful in a hurry. Dismiss any of this as a fad and you will be making a mistake.

Meanwhile, the traditional media remain largely befuddled, for the most part, about the entire trend.

Robert Anton Wilson - Maybe Logic

maybe logic is a feature-length documentary destined for a release date of spring 2003 about the universe of Robert Anton Wilson featuring video of Bob spanning over 25 years & interludes w/ru sirius, Paul Krassner, Tom Robbins, Rev. Ivan Stang, Douglas Rushkoff & many more. The DVD (and VHS) will be available through this website and at select theaters & film festivals.

Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@

I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.” (via)

Ambient Devices

Ambient Device -- a device which delivers information, not with pupil-dialating graphics or scrolling tickers, but with subtle changes in color. From stock portfolio performance to homeland security status, these gauges offer those who use them an easy, unintrusive way to monitor everyday data. While the Ambient Orb might seem destined for the remainder bins at The Sharper Image, Ambient president David Rose insists there is a demand for such devices. "People want information, but they don't want to invest a lot of time in getting it," says Rose. "This makes getting information a 'glanceable' thing."

Riterz 4 Sail on Ebay

Complete former staff of Z---- T--- U-----, a division of one of the top ten highest-trafficked sites on the Web, currently available to instantly implement professional Web site or print magazine. Bi-coastal staff has familiarity with information technology issues, HTML, Vignette, and AP style. Personnel include:
San Francisco:
(1) Executive editor
(2) Senior editor / producers
(1) Senior producer
Boston:
(1) Executive editor / columnist
(1) Managing editor / copy editor
(2) Senior producers
(2) Senior editor / producers
(1) Senior Vignette programmer
Resumes available to highest bidder. Please e-mail any questions before bidding.

According to FC: 11 former Cnet (Ziff Davis) staff in two cities are for sale and Cnet is none to happy about it, according to cease & desist note from the lawyers.

Hey! If I buy them, will I be able to download them from download.com?

Chess: Kasparov Leads Computer

Chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov broke a spell in his contests against computers on Tuesday when he drew the second game of his 6-game match in New York against world champion program Deep Junior.

In Kasparov's epic struggles against the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue in 1996 and 1997, the winner of the second game went on to win the overall match. Kasparov faded after losing at this stage six years ago, troubled psychologically by analysis that showed he missed an opportunity to draw the game.

"The whole plan worked, but because of this spell on game two, this pressure on me, I spent probably an extra half an hour to decide if I should save a draw or provoke more complications," Azerbaijan-born Kasparov, the world's No. 1-ranked chess player, told reporters and spectators at the New York Athletic Club where the games are being played. [MORE]

Watch the matches between Kasparov and Deep Junior
as they happen. (Requires Flash 6 plug-in.)

Hollywood Urban Legends Debunked
Did Tom Green really crash a Bar Mitzvah dressed as Adolph Hitler? Was Humphrey Bogart the Gerber baby? Are Bert and Ernie gay?

Yes, if you believe popular urban legends. But, no, not if you care about the truth.
"You know you've made it when people start making up fantastic stories about you," says Richard Roeper, author of Hollywood Urban Legends (New Page Books) and co-host of Ebert & Roeper and the Movies.

"The bigger you are, the more outrageous the story," says Roeper. "Denials don't mean anything. The more Cher denies she had a rib removed to look skinnier, the more people think she really did it. And people believe these things — not because they are true — but because they enjoy a good story."

Some rumors have been repeated so often, they're just taken for granted. Just for the record: Humphrey Bogart never modeled as the cute tot on Gerber baby food jars. John Denver was never a sniper in Vietnam. And Mikey from the Life cereal commercials didn't die from swallowing Pop Rocks candy and washing it down with soda. [MORE]

Anti-gravity and us: Australia, the UK, anti-gravity and the Iraq crisis
Webdiarist Malcolm Street has a unique theory on why Britain and Australia are backing Bush on Iraq. Welcome to the anti-gravity arms race.

Are you sitting down? Good, because this is going to blow your mind.

This item is going to sound like a bad reject from conspiracy publications like Nexus or New Dawn, or an X-Files fanzine. It isn't. The indisputable fact is that both the US and the UK are putting serious money into anti-gravity research with military aerospace applications. The only question is how far it is from operational status. There is informed speculation that it is already used in the American B2 bomber.

I believe that access to this potentially revolutionary and obviously highly secret technology, perhaps via the JSF/F35 fighter program, could be behind the otherwise (in my view) inexplicable level of support given Bush over Iraq by Howard and Blair.

For the record I am a mechanical engineer who spent over two years at a British Aerospace guided missile R&D site in the early 1980s and have continued to take a strong interest in aerospace technology. I am a member of ASRI (Australian Space Research Institute). I am not a crank.

The most puzzling aspect to me of the American obsession with invading Iraq even without UN sanction is the continuing support provided by Tony Blair and John Howard. The USA's reason is obvious; to gain control of a major oil supply as insurance against increasing instability in Saudi Arabia. (If it's about human rights and weapons of mass destruction, why the kid gloves treatment of North Korea?) [MORE] | Via Weblogsky

CrimethInc. Free Sh*t

Free stuff and stuff you can download and DIY. Hours of subversive fun.

on community in cyberspace by humdog

when i went into cyberspace i went into it thinking that it was a place like any other place and that it would be a human interaction like any other human interaction. i was wrong when i thought that. it was a terrible mistake.

the very first understanding that i had that it was not a place like any place and that the interaction would be different was when people began to talk to me as though i were a man. when they wrote about me in the third person, they would say "he." it interested me to have people think i was "he" instead of "she" and so at first i did not say anything. i grinned and let them think i was "he." this went on for a little while and it was fun but after a while i was uncomfortable. finally i said unto them that i, humdog, was a woman and not a man. this surprised them. at that moment i realized that the dissolution of gender-category was something that was happening everywhere, and perhaps it was only just very obvious on the net. this is the extent of my homage to Gender On The Net.

i suspect that cyberspace exists because it is the purest manifestation of the mass (masse) as Jean Beaudrilliard described it. it is a black hole; it absorbs energy and personality and then re-presents it as spectacle. people tend to express their vision of the mass as a kind of imaginary parade of blue-collar workers, their muscle-bound arms raised in defiant salute. sometimes in this vision they are holding wrenches in their hands. anyway, this image has its origins in Marx and it is as Romantic as a dozen long-stemmed red roses. the mass is more like one of those faceless dolls you find in nostalgia-craft shops: limp, cute, and silent. when i say "cute" i am including its macabre and sinister aspects within my definition. [MORE]

Note: Thank you hummy. {{{smoochies}}}

New rules would force churches to employ atheists, Satanists

Thousands of religious schools, charities and organisations could face legal action if they refuse to employ atheists or sack staff who become Satanists under proposed Government regulations.

The laws, which are based on a European Union directive and which have to be implemented by December, ban discrimination in the workplace on the grounds of religion, belief or sexual orientation. | Via Unknown News

'American Splendor' Claims Sundance Prize

"American Splendor," a wily film biography that stars Paul Giamatti as churlish underground comic-book writer Harvey Pekar, won the grand jury prize, the top dramatic honor at the Sundance Film Festival.

Written and directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, "American Splendor" cleverly incorporates animation, archival video and interludes with the real Pekar, whose comic books caustically document his dreary life as a file clerk in Cleveland. | heads-up-Via technoccult

Note: Just 'cause it's a movie doesn't mean that you shouldn't read the comix. Took long enough to get it to movie form. Now if they'd only get it together on Shut Up Little Man!

Funny Quote of the day

I've just read an interesting book by Whitley Strieber, called The Path, (Available online from his website) that suggests we are companions of God. That we are God, that God exists holographically within each of us. (That is, we are not just a part of God.)

This book has created some earthquakes in my life. Mainly, it changed how I pray. As a companion of God, I can no longer beseech or ask for the things I want. Instead, my prayers have become strategy sessions between friends about how this thing can come about. I look at other people and am awed as I wonder, that's God? I look in the mirror: that's God? If it's true, then this will have a lot of repercussions in my life. | Via The WELL's Pre.vue Conference

Encyclopedia of the Marvelous,the Monstrous, and the Grotesque.

Some entries:

Acephalous. 'Having no part of the body specially organized as a head' (OED).

Demonic. Grotesque as "the demonic made trivial". See Lee Byron Jennings The Ludicrous Demon: Aspects of the Grotesque in German Post-Romantic Prose.

Imagination and pregnant women. See James Blondel's The Power of the Mother's Imagination over the Foetus (London 1729): "the mere longing for Muscles is sufficient to transubstantiate the true and original Head of the Child into a Shell-Fish". See also Pietro Pomponazzi, "If a pregnant woman greatly desires a chickpea, she will deliver a child bearing the image of a chickpea. That is how Ciciero's family got its name" (De naturalium effcetum admiradorum causis [Basel, 1556].

Marriage. "Deformed men, as a compensation for their handicap, will be favored for all positions where celibacy is a suitable qualification [...] Every boy who has some bodily defect will be excluded from the legitimate classes, and different classes of cripples will be constituted, in accordance with their degree of infirmity. (1) Those disabled will have a choice of marriage or the ecclesiastical state, secular or regular, as with the following class. (2) The lame without any other deformity will form a second class who can be given young girls as wives if they are otherwise vigorous and healthy. (3) The bandy-legged will qualify only for widows. (4) Congenital hunchbacks and deformed men will only obtain women past forty. (5) The deaf and one-eyed will have as wives only rejected girls who have not been chosen at the marriage festivals. (6) The blind will have the ugliest girls who have not been able to find husbands. Selection among the malformed will have as many divisions as among the robust. Priority will be given to those uniting the least deformity with the greatest merit; the rest will be ranked in accordance with the merit which offsets their deformities, until that subject is reached who has the least merit and the greatest defomity. Finally, it should be observed that those whose illness is communicable, such as the scrofulous, the scorbutic, the herpetic, the syphilitic, and so on, will not be able to marry,or will be permitted to marry only women past fifty, who might be willing to expose themselves to the disease. This will apply also to those attacked by epilepsy, consumption, and so on." From Nicolas-Edme Restif de la Bretonne's L'andrographe (1781), Articles 25 and 28.

Rectum. There are records of cases of birth from the rectum! See Gould and Pyle pp. 120-21. | Via Cup of Chicha

Dino-robot promises mobile assistance
Sanyo have unveiled a dinosaur-shaped robot home-help.

Banryu can be controlled remotely using a mobile phone.
It possesses infra-red, sonic, temperature and odour sensors to detect problems when the owners are away.
It can also move at speeds of up to 15 metres a minute.
The robot has been co-developed by Sanyo and specialist firn Tmsuk.
They plan to begin selling it in Japan by the end of next year. | Via Robotory

Better Porn, Now

Really, who gets off on this stuff?

The obvious answer, of course, is men. The bulk of the run-of-the-mill porn I "researched" for this column was patently male-oriented – as in, the men were either repulsive or mercifully out of sight. So is egregiously bad porn yet another social woe we chalk up to the Y chromosome, right alongside war and poverty?

No way, says David Loftus, the author of a newly released – often times shrill – defense of men's relationship with pornography, "Watching Sex." Based on an online survey of 150 men, Loftus's book claims that men are just as disgusted with standard porno fare. As one of his respondents puts it, "What I wish were eliminated is the formula ... which every scene follows: Kiss. Get undressed. Girl sucks guy. Guy licks girl. They screw missionary. They screw doggie-style. They screw female-superior. Back to the missionary. The 'cum shot.' Same old thing, with minor variations, over and over ..." [MORE]

THE CIA's SWINGIN' CATBOT

For decades, the CIA has been at the cutting edge of the very latest in surveillance technology. For an example, look no further than 1967's "Acoustic Kitty" project (scroll down to #27), a stroke of genius from the Agency's Directorate of Science and Technology. In it, a surgically altered cat, wired with transmitting and control devices, was trained to become a mobile, eavesdropping platform. As Victor Marchetti recalls in John Ranelagh's book The Agency:

they slit the cat open, put batteries in him, wired him up. The tail was used as an antenna. They made a monstrosity. They tested him and tested him. They found he would walk off the job when he got hungry, so they put another wire in to override that. Finally, they’re ready. They took it out to a park bench and said “Listen to those two guys. Don’t listen to anything else – not the birds, no cat or dog – just those two guys!”

They put him out of the van, and a taxi comes and runs him over. There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead! | Via American Samizdat

Kazaa goes on legal offense
The owners of the Kazaa file-sharing network are trying to defend a copyright-infringement lawsuit by alleging that the entertainment industry promotes piracy by failing to work with them to create a legal alternative.In court papers filed in Los Angeles, Sharman Networks Ltd. accused several movie studios and recording labels of antitrust violations.

“THE PLAINTIFFS HAVE FAILED to reasonably act to discourage infringing conduct, and the plaintiffs thereby promote the very infringing conduct about which they complain,” Sharman said Monday.
Kazaa is a system in which Internet users around the world can share movies, music and other digital materials. Although Kazaa claims it does not condone copyright infringement, users can easily get copyright materials shared by other users through the Kazaa network.

REBOUND: Fire in the Hole

Posse member and resident "lone nutter", DW Cooper wrote today to announce a forthcoming book, REBOUND: Fire in the Hole. Intrigued, someone from the editorial staff called him to do an interview in regards to this announcement. The interview went like this:

[RING-RING]

DW: Hello?

IB: DW, we got your announcement. What's with this new book? Can we...

DW: BUZZ OFF! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

[*CLICK*]

(!?)

What is he up to?

Anarchists and the fine art of torture

Bauhaus artists such as Kandinsky, Klee and Itten, as well as the surrealist film-maker Luis Bunuel and his friend Salvador Dali, were said to be the inspiration behind a series of secret cells and torture centres built in Barcelona and elsewhere...

"The avant garde forms of the moment - surrealism and geometric abstraction - were thus used for the aim of committing psychological torture.

"The creators of such revolutionary and liberating [artistic] languages could never have imagined that they would be so intrinsically linked to repression."

Songs From a Room with a Laptop
Santa Cruz, CA has become a nerve center for experimental electronic music as technology pushes creativity to a whole new level.

Although some astrophysicists might not agree, I've heard it said that the universe is made up of pure vibrations. Now I'm no shaman, but I'm pretty sure that means that when it's time for humankind to take the next evolutionary step into pure consciousness, we will all worship vibrators and become indentured servants to Frenchy's, and Brian Wilson will be king. I could think of worse fates, and since sound is all about good vibrations, I think it also means we'll have plenty of great music, too.

But this article isn't about some future utopia. It is, however, about an epic struggle between the past and the present; between technology and, er, nontechnology; between tradition and innovation. And, ultimately, it's about the eternal pool of good vibrations here in Santa Cruz. Please don't ask for directions--I meant that metaphorically.

The fact is, experimental electronic music is up and buzzing in Santa Cruz--in fact, it's become a veritable hub for the fledgling genre called "looping." But then lots of you already knew that, what with all the Electron Salon, Woodstockhausen and various looping festivals in town. This week sees two more significant events with Electron Salon V and a local stop for Rick Walker's Looping Trio tour. Even the mayor has gotten in on the action, with a proclamation deeming Jan. 25 as "International Live Looping Day in Santa Cruz." The real questions are: who are these people making this music, what's it all about, and, perhaps most pressingly, is it cool enough to deserve your attention? The short answer is, yes. But getting to yes is half the fun, and it's also the title of a book--one that local looping guru Walker knows a lot about. [MORE]

Where to Hear Looping: We can only drone on about the music for so long. Being music, it really ought to be heard. Here's when and where.

Looper's Delight

Auxpan:Creating a buzz with his DIY electronica

It began with Bjork giving some well-deserved attention to the frigid island up north. After that, Iceland was churning out talented musical artists at a frightening rate. With Royksopp, Quarashi, Sigur Ros and Múm following suit, it's no wonder this tiny arctic nation has produced another musical marvel.

Auxpan (20-year-old Elvar Már Kjartansson) has been building quite a reputation for himself in Reykjavik's electronic music community and along the European festival circuit, with his music and knack for creating music "machines". Even his name is a derivative of his tinkering talent: aux (auxiliary), pan (panel). This sound crafter works with a number of electronics and everyday items (radios, cassette recorders, cookie tins, sound chips from birthday cards) to create original sound-making machines. Incorporating samples of sound sometimes collected during his phone company day job, techno-saavy Auxpan has created music unlike your average radio play. Sound bytes, rhythmic patterns, and words come together to form an experimental DIY sound.

Come March, Auxpan will test America's music scene when he hits the Big Apple. So keep an ear open for the unique sounds of this young new talent.

Razzies.com - Golden Raspberry Award Foundation

Vote early, vote often (as they say in Chicago). The Razzies, the self-proclaimed anti-Oscars‘ that seem to be done by a bunch of graduate students, internet personalities, and your other varieties of guys with pony-tails (and the quizzical girls who chose to love them). (And that's enough of this ‘ crap, by the way, because it just seems so stupid. Listen, Academy of Arts n' Sciences/group of film nerds, nobody's trying to steal your precious award names. And what if I did name my fridge "The Oscar"? What are you gonna do, punk? Thought so).

¤ c i r c l e m a k e r s ¤: Top of the Crops 2002



Circelmakers reviews the best Crop Circles of 2002.

Dark Matter Halos and Anitneutrinos

DARK MATTER HALOS FOUND?
Astrophysicists spot solution to puzzle of quasars' quick formation.

ANTINEUTRINOS CAUGHT IN VANISHING ACT
Disappearance of nuclear reactors' subatomic particles
confirms theory.

February 12 a day of Poetry Against the War

HI Poets!
Now's our chance to get your poem against the war delivered to the White House. Spread the news! All good wishes, to all beings.

-Diane di Prima
======================
Dear Friends and Fellow Poets:
When I picked up my mail and saw the letter marked "The White House," I felt no joy. Rather I was overcome by a kind nausea as I read the card enclosed:

Laura Bush
requests the pleasure of your company
at a reception and
White House Symposium on
"Poetry and the American Voice"
on Wednesday, February 12, 2003
at one o'clock

Only the day before I had read a lengthy report on the President's proposed "Shock and Awe" attack on Iraq, calling for saturation bombing that would be like the firebombing of Dresden or Tokyo, killing countless innocent civilians.

I believe the only legitimate response to such a morally bankrupt and unconscionable idea is to reconstitute a Poets Against the War movement like the one organized to speak out against the war in Vietnam.

I am asking every poet to speak up for the conscience of our country and lend his or her name to our petition against this war, and to make February 12 a day of Poetry Against the War. We will compile an anthology of protest to be presented to the White House on that afternoon.

Please submit your name and a poem or statement of conscience to: kokua@olympus.net

There is little time to organize and compile. I urge you to pass along this letter to any poets you know. Please join me in making February 12 a day when the White House can truly hear the voices of American poets.

Sam Hamill

The U.S. Needs to Open Up to the World- Brian Eno: A European View
To this European, America is trapped in a fortress of arrogance and ignorance

Europeans have always looked at America with a mixture of fascination and puzzlement, and now, increasingly, disbelief. How is it that a country that prides itself on its economic success could have so many very poor people? How is it that a country so insistent on the rule of law should seek to exempt itself from international agreements? And how is it that the world's beacon of democracy can have elections dominated by wealthy special interest groups? For me, the question has become: "How can a country that has produced so much cultural and economic wealth act so dumb?" | Via Aberrant News

The Race to Kill Kazaa
The servers are in Denmark. The software is in Estonia. The domain is registered Down Under, the corporation on a tiny island in the South Pacific. The users - 60 million of them - are everywhere around the world. The next Napster? Think bigger. And pity the poor copyright cops trying to pull the plug.

On October 2, 2001, the weight of the global entertainment industry came crashing down on Niklas Zennström, cofounder of Kazaa, the wildly popular file-sharing service. That was the day every major American music label and movie studio filed suit against his company. Their goal was to shutter the service and shut down the tens of millions of people sharing billions of copyrighted music, video, and software files. Only problem: Stopping Napster, which indexed songs on its servers, was easy - the recording industry took the company to court for copyright infringement, and a judge pulled the plug. With Kazaa, users trade files through thousands of anonymous "supernodes." There is no plug to pull. [MORE]

Matrix Reloaded Trailer

Warner Brothers posted the full trailer for The Matrix Reloaded Sunday on the web to coincide with its showing during the SuperBowl. It promises a broader look into the sequel to The Matrix than the previous teaser trailer which gave only small glimpses.

Music retailers discover digital distribution

Hoping to offset a revenue loss brought on by an estimated 9 percent drop in CD sales last year, a half-dozen major music retailers, among them Best Buy, Tower Records, Virgin Entertainment and Wherehouse Music, have allied to sell digital music over the Internet. The companies will today announce Echo Inc., a consortium developing a service that will allow each of its members to distribute music on the Internet under their respective brand names. While Echo has not yet licensed the music it needs to truly make a go of such a service, it's confident it can do so in short order. "[We] have existing relationships with the labels, so that helps," Echo CEO Dan Hart told The New York Post. "The music industry is hurting, and there is a lot of interest in getting the labels and retailers to work together. The goal of this whole thing is to make digital music work. There's no point in doing this if we can't get traction."

A Philosopher of Change

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." -Thomas Paine

The order of order is the chaos of control...A Philosopher of Change - An Interview with Yasuhiko Kimura by Carter Phipps
"...not only is the body of information growing but also the accessibility of metaformational insight becomes greater. Compared to hundreds of years ago, people are really becoming much more aware of that which is eternal. So we live at an exciting moment in history, when both metaformation and information are gaining tremendous momentum. We are transforming transformation itself." | Via abuddhas memes

Kasparov defeats computer challenger in first of six-game series

World chess champion Garry Kasparov has defeated his computerized challenger once. Now comes the harder part: doing it five more times.
Kasparov beat a computer called Deep Junior on Sunday in a four-hour contest that onlookers said he dominated. The six-game series, which he now leads 1-0, continues Tuesday and runs through Feb. 7.

More on this epic battle in this story.

Ong's Hat Story in the book "People Papers" (no explanation given)- 1974

Connect, They Say, Only Connect

Mr. Watts, 31, is a network theorist. And these days that means fielding frequent calls from powerful admirers like Mr. Berkeley — Wall Street moguls and government officials eager to tap into a nascent academic science that few understand but that many think may hold the key to everything from predicting fashion trends to preventing terrorism, stock market meltdowns and the spread of HIV.

Never mind that Mr. Watts's new book on the subject, "Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age," which will be published by W. W. Norton next month, is littered with the arcana of theoretical physics as well as charts and graphs that appear to require an advanced degree in math in order to decipher. Network theory is hot. Two other recent books on networks, "Linked: The New Science of Networks" (Perseus, 2002) by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi and "Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks" (W. W. Norton) by Mark Buchanan, have already sold tens of thousands of copies.

And that's not counting sales in the burgeoning genre of consumer studies, where network science terms and concepts are invoked with near religious fervor. From Malcolm Gladwell's three-year-old best seller, "The Tipping Point," to just-published analyses like "The Influentials" and "Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers," the shelves at Barnes & Noble are laden with books alternately applauding and deploring the importance of things like hubs, connectors, mavens and influencer teens for creating fads, cementing brand loyalty and swelling profits.

"Network theory has become a bit of a fad," Mr. Watts conceded after hanging up the phone. "I spend half my time telling people I think it's relevant to a lot of problems people care about and half my time trying to tone down the hype." | Via BB

Kasparov to battle Deep Junior

New York City is gearing up for an unprecedented clash between intellectual heavyweights: Grandmaster Garry Kasparov will take on reigning World Computer Chess champion Deep Junior, beginning on Sunday.

For chess and programming buffs, the $1-million, man-versus-machine match carries the glitz of a Las Vegas boxing bout. Deep Junior hasn't lost to a human in two years; Kasparov has been the world's top-rated human player for the past 18.

Kasparov is hoping to make up for his widely publicized 1997 defeat at the keyboard of IBM's chess supercomputer Deep Blue. This time he has been able to practise on a version of Deep Junior - which any buff can run on their laptop - for several months. [MORE]

A critique of a "extremist manifesto"
Critique of a "extremist manifesto" that this gentleman purportedly received. Guess what it is? The Declaration of Independence! Set your humor filter to stun before reading this:

So I got a copy of another extremist "manifesto" today, this one by a bunch of anti-American idiotarians who just don't seem to understand the basic principles that our great country was founded upon. What this piece of Berkeley leftist idiocy needs is a good fisking!

We hold these truths to be self-evident
They're already off to a bad start. Leaving aside the fact that this bunch of clowns doesn't even identify who the "we" is, their entire premise is based on the idea that their opinions are "truths" that are "self-evident". "Because I say so" isn't sufficient evidence for anything. Typical liberal tactics.

that all men are created equal,
More multiculturalist bullshit. The fact of the matter is, everyone is not the same. Some people are superior to others, and it's just a fact of life that the inferior people never seem to stop whining about.

And it just goes on like that...

The scandal of the Bloggies: The null device

From the null device: The scandal of the Bloggies, the supposed Academy Awards of the weblog community; it turns out that in the nomination process, corruption and favoritism are rife, with judges voting as a bloc, voting for people they know and like rather than objectively judging weblogs, and predictably the A-List(tm) storming home every time. It appears that the Bloggies selection process is dominated by a small clique of "in" bloggers who use this to increase their and their friends' Whuffie.

And then there are the Anti-Bloggies, which are the Razzies to the Bloggies' Oscars (or the Ig Nobels to the Bloggies' Nobels, or something like that), but still tend to focus on Well-Known Blogging Personalities and the memes that pass between them. | Via The null device

Note: This is all reminiscent of the Webbies, huh?

According to Pravda, we're all dead today

Recently, on December 27, 2002 Ukraine’s newspaper Pravda Ukraini (Ukrainian Truth) published a sensation that attracted little attention in the fuss on the New Year’s eve. The newspaper reported that a meteorite called Eight (it is called so by its shape) was approaching the Earth and would hit the planet on January 25, 2003. It was also reported that “leaders and scientists of the world largest countries started incredibly heated disputes on the problem. The world practice witnessed such situation for the first time. It was also for the first time that projects of astrophysicists were discussed at parliamentary sessions in Central Europe. The reason to it was a huge meteorite hundreds times larger than the famous Tunguska meteorite, which can drop on the Earth on January 25, 2003. The most optimistic forecasts say that if the meteorite falls, it may raze to the ground the territory of several thousands of square kilometers.” [MORE]

Awakening to the Omega Point: Part1-Chardin and the Noosphere

With the convenience of modern telecommunications and cyber technology, it is now possible to interact and communicate with anyone in the world instantly. The distance gap between people has been closed and now brain can speak to brain directly. Vast webs of knowledge are now being created through the collaborative sharing of ideas. The many nodes and interconnections of this global network are rapidly increasing and proliferating throughout society. Many speculate that this super network is the central nervous system of the burgeoning global brain. According to futurists, this sheath of technology covering the planet, this technosphere, is the material basis of the now awakening Noosphere, earth’s mental envelope or field. The word noosphere derives from the Greek “noos”, or “nous”, and means mind, while “Sphere”, or “spheria,” of course means globe. It is therefore the globe of thought, and includes all knowledge of collective humanity. This is a similar to Carl Jung's collective unconscious. [MORE]

Glacial melt turns up "treasure"

Biologist Gerry Kuzyk was hiking with his wife in the remote reaches of the Yukon when he caught the putrid scent of caribou dung wafting through the chill air. Then he saw it -- the biggest pile of animal droppings he had ever seen, 8 feet high and stretching over a half-mile of mountainside.
Kuzyk, a researcher with the Yukon Department of Renewable Resources, knew there weren't enough caribou in the entire territory to create such an epic mound. Odder yet, there hadn't been caribou in the area for nearly a century.
"It was like being in the `Twilight Zone,' " said Rick Farnell, a colleague who helped investigate the find. "You could see them from a distance -- big, black bands of feces. I'm talking tons of it."
The mystery was solved by lab analysis: The dung, the product of innumerable migrating caribou herds, had been frozen for thousands of years and only recently exposed by melting ice. Along with the dung, the scientists soon discovered an arsenal of Stone Age darts, arrows and spears. | Via Sassafrass

Note: One man's poo is another man's treasure, or something like that...

DoD offering admin privileges on .mil Web sites

Care to register a .mil Web site of your own for free? The DoD has gone out of its way to make it a snap. An unbelievably badly-protected admin interface welcomes you to register whatever domain you please (http://Rotten.mil anyone?), or edit anything they've already got. The interface is so ludicrously unprotected that it's been cached by Google and fails to mention that you must be authorized to muck about with it. Incredibly, default passwords are cheerfully provided on the page. | Via Post Atomic