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What if artists were in control of their own television station, paid nearly nothing in rent, and had a hyperactive work ethic to constantly create amazing new, innovative art? Hats off to Scott Reeder, Tyson Reeder and all their Milhaus cohorts for making their own fun a way of life.

Close to 2,000 Windows-based PCs with high-speed Internet connections have been hijacked by a stealth program and are being used to send ads for pornography, computer security experts said on Friday.

It is unknown exactly how the Trojan program is spreading to victim computers around the world, whose owners most likely have no idea what is happening, said Richard M. Smith, a security consultant in Boston.

The way we organize information did not change for a long time. We are somehow stuck with the folder metaphor and explorer style navigation.

Scopeware Vision is an attempt to change that. Is it the future of the Desktop ?

The philosophy of Scopeware is based on the basic premise that information should be woven into a flowing narrative stream with a past, present and future that you can tune in from anywhere. This addresses the fact that many people prefer to organize information as a Heap - "Heap People".

Dr. David Gelernter, world-renowned Yale professor and Chief Scientist of Scopeware is since a long time researching this field.

The current version of scopeware combines a visual semi-3D user interface with a desktop search engine to let users organize and find information on their desktop.
Vision search results take the form of a stack of thumbnails.

Along these lines, also check out The Brain, which has a new release candidate out.

let cyberspace be your rock garden...

...or INDUCTIVE INFERENCE AFFECTIVE LANGUAGE ANALYZER SIMULATING ETHICAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Also see: Lucerne Valley man patents ethical artificial intelligence

Octodog's Frankfurter Converter. 'Nuff said.

Slide to the right, check out the final installment of Ozric On..., titled : TheOs . Read the latest or read them all, again and again and again.

...as new friends begin to accumulate for you on the Northeast.

Dav of the Headmap Collective has created a nifty program that is slowly automatically mapping the 6 degrees of his social network across the globe using Friendster, so that his pattern of friends and family begin to look like very slowly moving weather patterns.

By watching Dav's friend network slowly change over the next few months, could you predict where Dav's new friends will probably appear? By watching your own and comparing, could you calculate the increasing or decreasing probability that you will make friends with Dav soon? Hopefully, Friendster-associated software will continue to become more sophisticated, until all aspects of human sociality can be automated.

Forget Science Fiction. Here's the Science.

A newly identified planet orbits a pulsar and a white dwarf near the core of a globular cluster.

Of the more than 100 planets found so far, none may be stranger than the one described by astronomers during a press conference on Thursday, July 10. If all of the team's claims are true, the newfound planet is the oldest known, the most distant, the first found in a globular cluster, the only one that formed around a metal-poor star, and the first one known orbiting a binary-star system. The planet is "different from Earth in just about every way," NASA astronomer Anne Kinney commented Thursday.

Nanobots have now burrowed deep into the public imagination. Even though current nano-research is dedicated to eminently sensible aims, from sunscreens to antibacterial socks, could a swarm of microscopic machines one day dissolve everything into grey goo?

Whole, a riveting new documentary by Melody Gilbert that recently premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival and will soon be shown at festivals in Calgary and London, is about an increasingly visible group of people who call themselves "amputee wannabes." Wannabes desperately wish to have their healthy limbs removed, and some have succeeded in having it done. Kevin, a university lecturer and one of several wannabes featured in the film, had his leg amputated by Robert Smith, a surgeon in Scotland who has amputated the legs of two otherwise healthy people. George Boyer shot his own leg off with a shotgun. Others have used chain saws and homemade guillotines. Why? Nobody really knows, including the wannabes themselves, who often say they have had the desire since they were children.

Before his incarceration in 1969 Bobby BeauSoleil was a musician who spent much of his late teens traveling the California coast between San Francisco and Los Angeles. During this period, he was on the cutting edge of emerging musical styles and played with several innovative musical ensembles. For all of the 31 years that he has been in prison, he has continued to explore new ways of expressing himself through music, as well as in the visual arts.

We are auctioning Bobby's Lucifer Rising double neck guitar on Ebay. | Via obscurantist comments

Snapple Cap. Call them what you will. All our lives we have learned facts, figures, and useful information. But if you ever stop to think about what you are learning, does it actually make sense? or do we just believe it because that's what we've been told? Do you really need to wait 30 minutes after eating before you go in the pool? Ever get an e-mail forward that tells you that a duck's quack doesn't echo? Believe it?

Artificial intelligence programs that can beat human opponents at poker are the focus of Darse Billings, a doctoral researcher at the University of Alberta.

WARNING!
You may pee your pants laughing.

If you're in Seattle or will be- come on over to Roq La Rue- I'm opening a show called "Dark Fairytales" tomorrow, with lots of fantastic, creepy, wonderful art!

Glenn Barr "Encrypted"

I’ve been gifting some stock to weblog owners I thought might appreciate it, and which run weblogs I read. A link is still appreciated, though :)

Here’s how I’ll do it. Link fsck.clusterfsck.net, and send me an email, and I’ll gift you some or all of my shares. Both sides make a profit - you get the shares, whose price will go up or remain stable, since you’re linking the blog, and I get one more link to my weblog, which - to be honest - is more important to me than blogshares.

If I run out of my shares, I’ll gift away the shares in other weblogs I have. Whether you link me or the blog I gift you with is your decision. The latter is more beneficial to you, the former more to me, and makes me happy, which is what we all want, don’t we?

Note: We got ours in the mailbag. Such a nice unexpected gift.

Still unsure about those new-fangled voting machines? Try one out here and decide for yourself what all the uproar is about. As they say in Chicago: "Vote early and vote often! Being dead is no excuse for not voting!" | Via DRT

All it takes is a grasp of theoretical physics, control of the space-time continuum, and maybe a ball of cosmic string.

Did the tech bubble burst in your face? Were you one of those unlucky outsiders who missed the Yahoo! IPO or got stuck with Enron stock long after the execs had dumped theirs? Wouldn't you like to be, just once, in the right place at the right time? Now you can. Follow a few simple instructions to relive the bull market and bail out just in time - then go on to march with Pericles or meet your great-great-great-grandchild.

Once confined to fantasy and science fiction, time travel is now simply an engineering problem.

When Microsoft released the Xbox in November 2001, it was heralded as far more than a game machine. Even as the Xbox took aim at Sony's PlayStation 2 game empire, the console was meant to lead Microsoft's broader invasion of the living room. Incorporating a hard drive, which made it more readily adaptable than other consoles, the Xbox had the potential to be a digital-entertainment nerve center. That is happening, but not necessarily as Microsoft planned. All sorts of new software is indeed running on Xbox consoles these days, and they are in fact becoming home-entertainment hubs, but it is not Microsoft doing the amazing. Rather, an online confederacy apparently numbering in the thousands - including accomplished hackers of varied motives and everyday technophiles is taking the lead. Those involved often call their efforts "unleashing" or "unshackling" - freeing the Xbox to express its inner PC. The Xbox is a particularly attractive target for hackers because while it is essentially a standard PC modified to do only a few things, like play Xbox games, it is much cheaper than a PC. It is like an economy car modified to follow only a few roads - but one potentially as powerful as a far more expensive model.

"The reality is that if you could bypass Microsoft's operating system you would end up with a fairly powerful computer for less than $200," the Manhattan financial executive said.

Also see: A PlayStation2 enthusiast has found a way to turn the games console into a web browser.

by Rick Fisk, LibertyForum

(Author's note: In the interest of disclosure, I am the inventor of a bio-metric authentication system that is, in one embodiment, designed to enhance payment systems. As such, my invention might end up being used to enhance the technology of companies I mention in this article and I may have already or will soon approach these same companies to market this technology.)

While rival funnyman, Mike Warnke (who professed to be a convert from the highest echelons of Satanic priesthood and the Illuminati, and was later exposed to be a fraud) used dumb nose-picking jokes and other crude means to win souls, evangelical humor team Isaac Air Freight always took the high road, and were the most successful christian comedy team of the 1970s and 80s.

Listening to the comedy of IAF is a surreal experience, where a quick trip to hell is often the punchline. They were the fundamentalist's version of Steve Martin, mixing a breezy California humor with a medieval sense of damnation.

And now, after a ten year hiatus, Isaac Air Freight is BACK! Enjoy the yuks of a blessed message all over again, and book IAF for your church or youth group.

Race ya for the pink slip.

You deserve a 350 mph, 28 miles per gallon "skycar."

Being Invisible - Next-gen optical camouflage is busting out of defense labs and into the street. This is technology you have to see to believe.

The Antigravity Underground - The fantastic floating device called a lifter has no moving parts, no onboard fuel, and no shortage of wide-eyed admirers. Even inside NASA.

A California study has revealed a new class of cosmic particles that may shed light on the composition of dark matter in the universe. These particles, called superweakly interacting massive particles, or superWIMPs, may constitute the invisible matter that makes up as much as one-quarter of the universe's mass.

Wired gets a clue about Machinima.

The fledgling art of using 3-D computer games to make animated movies is coming of age.

Around the world, increasing numbers of would-be movie moguls are utilizing the 3-D graphics engines of games like Quake or Unreal to produce animated movies -- at a fraction of the money spent by studios like Pixar.

Known as machinima ("machine cinema"), the relatively new, no-budget genre has yet to produce a blockbuster of Finding Nemo proportions.

However, machinima is maturing so rapidly, some predict it will soon be a major force in animation, especially with the imminent arrival of a new generation of hardware and software promising an era of photo-realistic "cinematic computing."

In response to a 14-year-old-girl's question about blogging, Dear Abby gives advice to bloggers that all online journalists would be wise to follow: "The written word takes on a life of its own and never dies -- particularly in cyberspace. That is why it's important that a person carefully consider what he or she is posting before making it public. I cannot urge people strongly enough to remember that on the Internet there is no such thing as an eraser."

Razor blades and medicines packaged with pinpoint-sized computer chips and tiny antennae to send retailers and manufacturers a wealth of information about the products -- and those who buy them -- will start appearing in grocery stores and pharmacies this year.

Within two decades, the minuscule transmitters are expected to replace the familiar product bar codes, and retailers are already envisioning the conveniences the new technology, called "radio frequency identification," will bring -- even as others are raising privacy concerns.

Also see: Wal-Mart cancels 'smart-shelf' trial

Hollywood, the world capital of cinema, will soon become home to a new monument to a very different sort of entertainment when a new museum of erotica opens here, officials said.

The Erotic Museum is scheduled to open in the heart of movieland in the second half of the year, boasting a collection ranging from Pablo Picasso nudes to antique sex machines, organisers said.
'There's a pop appeal to our product in its willingness to embrace both serious art and indulgent fun,' said Boris Smorodinksky, one of the people behind the shrine to sex.

Moscow Times -- So now we know. After all the mountains of commentary and speculation, all the earnest debates over motives and goals, all the detailed analyses of global strategy and political ideology, it all comes to down to this: George W. Bush waged war on Iraq because, in his own words, God "instructed me to strike at Saddam."

This gospel was revealed, appropriately enough, in the Holy Land, through an unusual partnership between the fractious children of Abraham. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz was given transcripts of a negotiating session between Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and faction leaders from Hamas and other militant groups.

Here are Bush's exact words: "God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me, I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."

God was holding the door open for Middle East peace right now -- but they would have to move fast, because soon the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe would have to give His attention to something far more important: the election of His little sunbeam, Georgie, in 2004.

Thailand is to impose a night curfew on online gaming to curb rising rates of addiction by young players, Information and Communications Technology Minister Surapong Suebwonglee said on Tuesday.
Game servers, both local and overseas, will be blocked from 22:00 to 06:00 daily from July 15 to September 30, while internet cafes will also have their hours curbed to those times, Surapong told reporters.
Under particular attack is Korean role-playing game Ragnarok, which was introduced to Thailand seven months ago and reportedly now has more than 600 000 registered players here.
'As a matter of fact Ragnarok is not a violent game but its problem is that child players are becoming addicted, so we have to prevent children playing for long periods of time,' Surapong said.

We would have expected literacy advocates to be applauding Laura Bush for her recent appearance on the CBS "Early Show" to promote summer reading and recite to preschoolers from "Book! Book! Book!," a whimsical ode to the joys of reading by children's writer Deborah Bruss and illustrator Tiphanie Beeke.

But the American Booksellers Association -- which represents the nation's independent bookstores -- is attacking the first lady instead, complaining that Amazon, the mammoth online bookseller, is the sole outlet touted on the CBS show's Early Readers Club Web site. President Ann Christophersen has fired off a letter chiding Bush for allegedly lending her clout to a retailer trying to steal market share from the independents. "Wouldn't it be better for every library and every outlet that sells books to have the same opportunity to disseminate the information?" Christophersen wrote.

Some of the booksellers are also steamed that a member of the first lady's staff, who initially paid $16.67 for "Book! Book! Book!" at A Likely Story, an independent in Alexandria, returned it the day after Bush's June 25 "Early Show" appearance and received a full refund.

Radical Software: "Our purpose is to make all the historic issues of Radical Software freely available to everyone. This site is designed for easy browsing and downloading, and hosts a sophisticated search engine to help you find the information you require on all aspects of independent video and video art back in the 'Portapak Era.'"

The historic video magazine Radical Software was started by Beryl Korot, Phyllis Gershuny, and Ira Schneider and first appeared in Spring of 1970, soon after low-cost portable video equipment became available to artists and other potential videomakers. Though scholarly works on video art history often refer to Radical Software, there are few places where scholars can review its contents. Individual copies are rare, and few complete collections exist. This Web site makes it freely available and searchable on the Internet. | Via obscurantist

"Scratch video is an emerging digital medium drawing influence from hip hop, electronic music and Guerilla Television-style video. New technology has blurred the lines between media -- when everything becomes 1's and 0's, we can put things together in new ways, and use our senses in new synergetic combinations. Scratch video is a medium with tight continuity between image and sound.

Scratch video is assembling music using video editing software. Editors loop the video and audio of a drummer playing a breakbeat, then add layers of other samples to create a visually enhanced edition of traditional hip hop. Adding visuals to produced music, a scratch video editor represents beats and samples with specific visuals, like an equivalent snare drum image for every snare sound. Scratch video is performed live, a jam session between a DJ and a VJ (video jockey) using MIDI technology and a video mixer to synch image and sound on the fly.

Scratch video is editing video samples into music. Instead of complaining about 'the media', scratch video demands you look for cool samples and actively interact with what you watch. " | Via obscurantist

Thanx for all the concern re: the disappearance of Libertythink.com. I wish I had thought of posting an announcement over here earlier. Duh.

Anyway, we are in the process of hosting the site on our own server locally, however, this has taken much longer than expected. We hope to be up and running within the next week, and don't worry, they'll be plenty of timely content. We may not be publishing, but the posting continues.

cheers
- valis

Patrick Hambrecht leads the Flaming Fire cult, and invites you to help him illustrate all 36,665 verses in the King James Bible. He enjoys reading "Tales from Vineyland." The cosmos is a shining temple.

Apparently considered a serious national problem, the chubby Chinese children of the affluent are growing in number, and are known as "xiao pangzi," or "little fatties."

To remedy the problem, architect Daniel Solomon stated in the New York Times that "there are ads now on Beijing television for summer camps modeled on World War II Japanese concentration camps. Middle-class parents send their obese children to be disciplined by guards dressed in Japanese World War II uniforms."

I've tried to find any evidence of these camps besides Daniel Solomon's quote, and can't find a single source outside of the New York Times -- can anyone corroborate this story?

The ideas of "Wiki" may seem strange at first, but dive in and explore its links. Wiki is a composition system, it's a discussion medium, it's a repository, it's a mail system, it's a tool for collaboration. Really, we don't know quite what it is, but it's a fun way of communicating asynchronously across the network.

The name "Wiki" may seem strange too - what does it mean? The WikiWikiWebFaq answers this and other questions, but the short answer is that wiki wiki is Hawaiian for "quick".

Note: Duck! The media is catching on!

http://fusionanomaly.net/billgates.html



i would like art bell to interview bill gates.

See also: Bigger Than Watergate!

The first step to Regime Change 2004 is assuring that there is a free and fair election in the United States. Of course, the mind-coaxed masses will automatically issue back, unconsciously, while they sip their 100 oz. soft drink whilst running over small children in their SUVs: "conspiracy theory" . . . well, you know better right? 'Conspiracy theory' has just become an empty-headed slur to be put up on the overloaded and thus irrevelant shelf with 'politically-correct.' The minute I hear anyone use either of those terms I know it's time to give up any chance I have of opening up an immediate channel of communication--by this time, it will take a fair bit of deprogramming to be able to converse with them on a level I am comfortable with.

But back to the stolen U.S. elections of 2000 and 2002--they were both separate fixes with a ton of differences but in both cases I have no doubt that at least in certain places, the fix was in. The first step to regaining or creating a democracy in America? Arguably this would be to assure that we Americans are assured a free and fair election. Or, perhaps the first step is informing the masses about how exactly their corporate media is put together, and how few decision-makers are actually making the decisions about everything they see and hear, and how, for instance, these handful of corporate media giants in America paid for FCC Chairman Michael Powell and his two fellow GOP FCC board member's plethora of trips recently--which can arguably be looked at with cynicism seeing as how those very same FCC members were soon to be voting on an issue very dear to their bill-footer's hearts--namely, deregulation. And then, once the people are aware of the corporate media system and it's stranglehold on the American public (World: seriously, the American public may seem dumb, and many times I myself curse them to no end, but to give them some credit, they are on the receiving end of the most magnificent media system ever invented, and if you were in a field and suddenly a great big spaceship descended upon ya with a thousand groovy lights beaming out all over the place, you'd be dazzled too) then maybe they would be more a) aware of the stolen election of 2002 and more educated about the details of the stolen election of 2000 (i.e.: I was watching the posters over at Fark recently banter about the stolen election of 2000, and not one of them knew that the State of Florida settled the case brought on by the NAACP re: throwing the blacks off the roles [read: obvious admission of guilt, thus 'stolen election' not debatable just on the fact of that case alone], not to mention the excellent reporting by Greg Palast on the subject, etc., etc.) . . . but in any case step one or step two or step three--it's in the Top Ten anyway! Take Back or Create Democracy in America! Assure a Free and Fair Election!!!

And you can start by reading the above articles.

And spreading the word, thanks.

What it is: By providing a system where A.I. fanatics can submit news freely, we can assure that our news is up-to date. The automatic porn filtering system implies the content is also relevant. As such, people in the research community will inform you of important events, or new scientific papers that you can attempt to understand. Together with this, the game industry veterans will let you know when they have something of interest.

Researchers at the University at Buffalo, New York, announced last week they have developed a system that lets one person experience the sense of touch felt by another. They said they could transmit the sensation across the Internet.

In about five years, people may use the system to feel the force and pressure Tiger Woods experiences every time he wallops a golf ball. It could be used in e-commerce, enabling buyers to feel fabrics before they buy. Or students could feel the precise pressure applied by brain surgeons as they remove tumors. They could potentially palpate the tumor, or any other organ, for themselves.

Strange, interesting and fun flash art.

In an apparent blow to Microsoft Corp., eight heavyweights in the consumer electronics industry have banded together to promote the Linux operating system.
In recent years, Linux has become a low-cost alternative to proprietary operating systems such as Microsoft Windows. Already, the free, open-source software program is widely used in network servers and desktops.
Sony, Sharp, Toshiba, Matsushita, Hitachi, NEC, Royal Philips Electronics and Samsung could avoid paying licensing fees and cut development costs by using Linux.

Imagine a gun that uses fingerprint scanning to prevent you firing a shot, brain implants that let you tap into people's memories and a newspaper that updates itself when a big story breaks. It's not science fiction, it's science fact, as technologists catch up with - and surpass - the benchmarks set by sci-fi writers and filmmakers.

Set in the not-too-distant future, sci-fi films offer insights into what the world might be like and what impact evolving technologies might have on daily life, says Dean Economou, chief technologist of the CSIRO's Centre for Networking Technologies for the Information Economy (CENTIE ). Economou says the fact that cloning, virtual reality and biometrics are commonplace concepts today is partly due to representations of the technologies in film and science-fiction literature and that scientists have taken many cues from what they've seen take place on screen.

"Artists are generally very good at reflecting human nature in the tenor of their times and sometimes that leads to very valuable insights," Economou says. "If you're not constrained by knowledge of things you can't do or think you can't do, I think you can come up with some really nice insights.

A consortium of universities and high-tech companies Tuesday formally launched a joint Internet-based test-bed platform for developing massive online services using distributed computing and overlay networks.

The project, dubbed "PlanetLab" is hosted by Princeton University but is a grass roots effort currently made up of 60 different academic institutions with 160 machines at 65 sites around the globe. The goal, say organizers is to make it so that educational organizations and private enterprise can build applications for the next generation of the Internet without bringing down the current system we know and love today.

A new shareware E-Book is out, penned by the likes of Captain Crunch and Matthew Smith, that makes the claims:

Don't bother planning your pension, the world is about to change and we can prove it, please just take 2 minutes out of your life to read this page, it may change your life.

Artificial intelligence is coming and it may become smarter than any of us. Smart networks using grid technologies could become a threat to us ALL, this is the real Matrix.

From Dot.Net to the X-Box, from M-Theory to the Playstation 3 the future is V.R. / A.I. and Nanotech.

If you ever wanted to know what the system is and what it has done to you, then this ebook is for you.

You left school, you were standardised, you took an exam, you were graded, they made you believe in money, this is the last great social control mechanism. There's more to this, than you can imagine.

...and there you have it. Or do you?

Note: One of the crew popped this up on MeFi, just to see what the reaction would be.

The Planetary Society's efforts to build and operate the world's first solar sail are pressing onward for what officials hope will be a launch before the end of this year.

Roughly two-thirds of college students play video games, but the image of a nerdy guy who spends all day in a dimly lit room blowing up computer-generated bad guys is off base, according to a new study.

College gamers are not necessarily male - or anti-social hermits. And while about a third of those surveyed admitted playing computer games during class, the games generally don't conflict with their studies, says the researcher who conducted the survey for the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

To thwart peer-to-peer pirates, the Recording Industry Association of America is wielding the clunky but mighty club of the federal court system.

Ian Clarke and the merry band of programmers who are creating Freenet are taking a different approach: They're betting that technology, not the law, holds the key to the future. They believe that Freenet, a radically decentralized network of file-sharing nodes tied together with strong encryption, will make it possible to share any kind of file with impunity--and offer superior anonymity in the process.

The digital equivalent of a bulky jacket with roomy pockets, camera-equipped mobile phones are making it a snap for "shoplifters'' to walk off with books and magazines-or copies of them anyway.

The practice of taking photos of reading material in shops, known as "digital shoplifting,'' has surged recently, in step with impressive improvements in the cameras' image quality.

According to the Japanese Magazine Publishers Association, most of the shutterbugs are taking pictures of information about movie show times, restaurants and recipes.

If the US and the UK are having trouble finding weapons of mass destruction, then they shouldn't be getting all hot and bothered.

The internet's best-known search engine Google appears to be in a somewhat similar boat.

Clicking on "I'm feeling lucky" when searching for "weapons of mass destruction", takes one to a site that has a heading "Can't find weapons of mass destruction". The text on the page reads:

"These Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be displayed. The weapons you are looking for are currently unavailable. The country might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your weapons inspectors mandate. Please try the following..."

[click here to bypass Google.]

"Forget about it, dude -- even genocidal litigation can't stop file sharers," said Wayne Rosso, president of Grokster, one of several systems that allow users to upload and download files -- many of which are unauthorized MP3 copies of songs published by the RIAA's member companies. Rosso said file-trading activity among Grokster users has increased by 10 percent in the past few days. Morpheus, another file-trading program, has seen similar growth.

Psychologists who study online behavior say in-game spats and the visceral responses aren't surprising. With simulations becoming more lifelike, the line between real and fake is blurred.

"The more real you try to make these online worlds, the more the problems are real-world problems," said John Suler, New Jersey's Rider University professor who specializes in the psychology of cyberspace.

But some players have reported online spats leaking out of the game. Players have hacked into others' accounts, posed as acquaintances and spread rumors about real people through instant messaging.

Some have reported identity theft.

That puts far more pressure on game makers to begin cracking down, experts say. It could lead to more real-world, legal liability for players and the companies that make the games.

"We're going to be forced to create a whole new area of social convention — and probably law — that reflects that kind of behavior," said psychologist David Greenfield, founder of the Center for Internet Studies and author of the book "Virtual Addiction."

Dave's Manifesto (or this blog's raison d'etre)

After the U.S. economy began its nosedive in 2000, the San Francisco job market -- which had previously been very favorable to those in search of employment -- began to see power shift back into the hands of employers. As a result, the tone of job listings on community sites such as craigslist.org started to change from "please please come work for us -- we'll give you a Porsche!" to a decidedly smug "Looking for a job? Well, you'll have to meet our huge list of required skills and qualifications, and be willing to work for peanuts."

As the ranks of the unemployed grew, so did the brazenness of employers, who were well aware that they could list a job looking for, say, a software engineer with marketing experience, writing skills, and a blimp pilot license, and still get thousands of resumes from the desperate job seeking hordes. All the while offering salaries far below the market rate even long before the unrealistic dot-com bubble days.

Well, as one of those desperate job seekers who sent out thousands of resumes to jobs I felt I was qualified for -- and who was treated with thinly veiled ennui by the few interviewers with whom I managed to gain face time -- I finally decided enough was enough. It was time that someone fought back against the opportunistic, greedy employers and their unrealistic expectations. If they were going to act arrogant and self-important, then I was going to respond in kind -- by appplying to jobs using the most obnoxious, aggressive attitude I could muster. I decided to begin all email job inquiries by asking how much they were paying, and how many vacation days I would get. I also adopted a terse, blunt writing style that made it sound like I was doing employers a favor just by inquiring about the job. Bascially, I decided to act like a complete asshole, because, in my opinion, that's how many employers were (and still are) acting.

This blog serves as a repository for email exchanges between me and several San Francisco Bay Area employers.

"I am the Publisher, Wayne E. Manzo; a Scientist, Engineer, Humanist, and a victim of the Alien Race having been framed as an Engineering Intern working for the U.S. Army at NASA Lewis Research Center... then Savagely Attacked and damned to the streets of their Alien Hive Cities."

"The publisher's facial structure changed as a result of being attacked via alien technology. The alien's have the technology to modify the appearance of human beings and themselves. This type of alien body shop is used to harass human beings, hide human slaves in Alien Hive Cities and Burbs, disguise aliens in society, and to impersonate specific human beings... Many Aliens are 2-People, that is, the aliens utilizing or controlling a re-animated human body that has the alien's physical appearance and thought process."

The ubiquity of technology in the lives of executives, other businesspeople and consumers has created a subculture of the "Always On" and a brewing tension between productivity and freneticism. For all the efficiency gains that it seemingly provides, the constant stream of data can interrupt not just dinner and family time, but also meetings and creative time, and it can prove very tough to turn off.

Some people who are persistently wired say it is not uncommon for them to be sitting in a meeting and using a hand-held device to exchange instant messages surreptitiously - with someone in the same meeting. Others may be sitting at a desk and engaging in conversation on two phones, one at each ear. At social events, or in the grandstand at their children's soccer games, they read news feeds on mobile devices instead of chatting with actual human beings.

These speed demons say they will fall behind if they disconnect, but they also acknowledge feeling something much more powerful: they are compulsively drawn to the constant stimulation provided by incoming data. Call it O.C.D. : online compulsive disorder. | Via BB

"THIS DOCUMENT was originally written by Pike to demonstrate the unimpeachable authenticity of the Constitutions of 1786, signed by Frederick the Great, King of Prussia. This was due to the competition that existed between the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite (AASR) and the Cerneau Rite. The Cerneauists claim that the Patents granted to Stephen Morin were bogus, while the AASR held that the Patents granted to Cerneau were bogus. There is some reason to hold that both sides of the argument were equally in the right, and equally in the wrong. At any rate, our reason for including the following material has less to do with the story of the Cerneauists versus the AASR. We are including a rather interesting narrative penned by Albert Pike concerning the history of the Order of the Illuminati, containing material that is generally not available. "

"Although originally created as an ensemble to perform a specific show, The Neo-Futurists have grown to become one of the most highly regarded experimental theater companies in the country. From humble beginnings as the first late-night theater in Chicago, we have expanded into a company that mounts full seasons of adventurous, smart, interactive theater while still pursuing the ideas which inspired our creation. "

Our Mission

The Neo-Futurists are a collective of wildly productive writer/director/performers who create:
Theater that is fusion of sport, poetry, and living-newspaper.
Non-illusory, interactive performance that conveys our experiences and ideas as directly and honestly as possible.
Immediate, unreproducable events at headslappingly affordable prices.
We embrace those unreached or unmoved by conventional theater-inspiring them to thought, feeling, and action.

Science News --- Retired astronomer Gerald S. Hawkins investigates the "ingenious, previously unknown geometric theorems -- of the type that appear in antique textbooks on Euclidean geometry" found in crop circles.

"Using data from published ground surveys and aerial photographs, he painstakingly measured the dimensions and calculated the ratios of the diameters and other key features in 18 patterns that included more than one circle or ring. In 11 of those structures, Hawkins found ratios of small whole numbers that precisely matched the ratios defining the diatonic scale. These ratios produce the eight notes of an octave in the musical scale corresponding to the white keys on a piano. The existence of these ratios prompted Hawkins to begin looking for geometric relationships among the circles, rings, and lines of several particularly distinctive patterns that had been recorded in the fields."