Archive for October, 2010
A British View of the Tea Party
British journalist Andrew Neil assesses the Tea Party movement with some sorely needed perspective. Here he writes an essay about it for the Guardian. Also shown is a trailer for a documentary film he made this past summer for the BBC, Tea Party America.
It’s 2am on a balmy August morning in Lexington, Kentucky, and the hotel car park is a flurry of activity as people arrive in cars and scurry on board two hired coaches, which rev up their engines in expectation of a long drive through the night. There is excitement in the air but also some apprehension: these are ordinary folk from the American heartland on a mission that will take them into the heart of enemy territory – Washington DC. America’s Tea Party is on the move…
Uncover ‘Hidden Wisdom’ with Tim Wallace-Murphy on Disinformation: The Podcast
Disinformation: The Podcast: Episode 14 — Hidden Wisdom
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This episode features an interview with Tim Wallace-Murphy, author of Hidden Wisdom: Secrets of the Western Esoteric Tradition. Tim talks about the history of the occult, the historical need for secrecy in this tradition, and what it has left us in modern times.
After the interview, Raymond and Joe celebrate their 5th anniversary as co-hosts by taking up their old mantle of armchair film critics. Stay tuned for their scathing review of What in the World are they Spraying, a new documentary about the “chemtrail conspiracy.”
Air Force Academy Finally Accepting Spell-Casters
Noah Shachtman writes on the always interesting WIRED’s Danger Room:
Just a few years ago, the Air Force Academy was considered such an evangelical hothouse that the place got sued for its alleged discrimination against non-Christians. Today, the Academy is boasting of its thriving pagan community — and its friendliness towards spell-casters.
In a press release issued [on Oct. 21st], the Academy features Tech. Sgt. Brandon Longcrier, “the lay leader for the Academy’s Earth-Centered Spirituality community, which includes Wiccans and Pagans from various traditions.” (It’s part of a larger effort by the school to promote an image of tolerance.)
During an inter-faith discussion group, the release notes, one cadet asked Longcrier “whether Wiccans or Pagans practiced ‘black magic.’”
Sergeant Longcrier responded by citing the Wiccan credo, or Rede: “An it harm none, do what ye will.” That would seem to preclude harmful spellcraft.
Famous TV Cartoon Characters As Skeletons
Artist Michael Paulus has skeletal versions he created of 22 cartoon icons on his website:
Writes Michael Paulus:
Animation was the format of choice for children’s television in the 1960s, a decade in which children’s programming became almost entirely animated. Growing up in that period, I tended to take for granted the distortions and strange bodies of these entities.These Icons are usually grotesquely distorted from the human form from which they derive.
I decided to take a select few of these popular characters and render their skeletal systems as I imagine they might resemble if one truly had eye sockets half the size of its head, or fingerless-hands, or feet comprising 60% of its body mass.
These characters have become conventions that are set, defined, and well-known personas in our culture. Being that they are so commonplace and accepted as existing I thought I would dissect them like science does to all living objects —…
Can Google Predict Election Results?
Google announced they’ve searched for clues about the upcoming U.S. election using their internal tools (as well as its “Insights for Search” tool, which compares search volume patterns for different regions and timeframes.) “Looking at the most popular searches on Google News in October, the issues that stand out are the economy,” their official blog reported, adding “we continue to see many searches for terms like unemployment and foreclosures, as well as immigration and health care.”
But one technology reporter also notes almost perfect correspondence between some candidate’s predicted vote totals from FiveThirtyEight and their current search volume on Google, with only a small margin of error for other candidates. “Oddly enough, the race with a clear link between web interest and expected voting is the unusual three-way contest [in Florida], where the breakdown between candidates should if anything be less clear-cut and predictable.”
And Google adds that also they’re seeing national interest in one…
Zach Galifianakis Smokes a Joint on Bill Maher’s Show (Video)
On last night’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the panel discussed the lack of Democratic support forCalifornia’s Proposition 19 (Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010).
“It’s a tricky thing, politically, to jump on that bandwagon because I think that maybe people see it as taboo still,” Zach said, and then pulled a cigarette from his jacket pocket and lit it. He took a drag and then passed it across the table to Fox News correspondent Margaret Hoover, who smelled the cigarette, laughed and nodded, and handed it back.
Galifianakis then took a couple more puffs and shouted, “Oh my God, look at those dragons!”
Video of Alleged Ghosts at Gettysburg
The following video was allegedly filmed at Gettysburg by Delia and Tom Underwood in Nov. 2001. Horses on a footpath? Teenagers messing around? Or the ghosts of Confederate soldiers marching off a 10 foot drop and up into the trees?
Carving a Halloween Pumpkin … With A Gun? (Video)
YouTube user Hickok45 demonstrates his method for carving a pumpkin:
How Ghosts, Superstitions, and Vampires Have Been Used for Psychological Warfare
Interesting article from Cyriaque Lamar on io9.com on the history of “occult” warfare:
Military psy ops aren’t limited to leaflets, propaganda broadcasts, and Korean pop music. In the past, the US military has played on their opponent superstitions of vampires, ghosts, and astrology. Here are some strange examples.
In World War II, US forces exploited the Nazi’s predilection to put stock in superstitions and the occult. The Rand Corporation’s 1950 memorandum “The Exploitation of Superstitions for Purposes of Psychological Warfare” details how pseudoscience connoisseur Joseph Goebbels counteracted Allied attempts to strike fear into the superstitious strata of the German population.
Another curious incident noted in the Rand document occurs in Italy, where British military created a giant manikin to scare rural residents. A large, shambling creature was assembled to freak out superstitious locals…
Will Generation Y Be the Greatest Threat to Consumer Capitalism Yet?
Douglas Haddow writes about the “coming barbarism” in Adbusters:
On a blustery February morning in 2009 I found myself stranded in Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5. My flight was delayed indefinitely due to the UK’s biggest snowstorm in 18 years, leaving me to wander aimlessly against a backdrop of scrolling cancellations and panicky commuters. Outside the billowing airport architecture London was deadlocked, its citizens sabotaged by an absentee polar jet stream.
As I wandered through the terminal I watched groups of temporary refugees from across the world form micro-communes, emptying their luggage onto the floor and building little nests out of coats and sweaters. It was a surreal image: The typically bustling and optimistic concourse was transformed into something that looked more like a deportation centre.
Having been mugged at knifepoint in a dodgy Parisian stairwell earlier that week, I was without cash or plastic. No big deal at first, but after ten hours…
Emasculation in Republican Psychological Warfare, and Why It Works
The recent slew of “man up” and similar comments coming mostly from Republican candidates makes this 2008 Stephen Ducat piece from the Huffington Post perhaps even more relevant than when it was written:
The racist lynchings of the 19th and 20th centuries featured castration as a central component of those ritualized assaults. The same appears to be true of contemporary rhetorical lynchings visible in the right wing media-scape. First aired on April 23 of this year as a news item, the latest ad by the Grand Dragon of GOP character assassins, Floyd Brown, is only the most recent example.
Brown, who succeeded in turning Black rapist murderer Willie Horton into Michael Dukakis’s running mate, is now going after the testicular credibility of Barack Obama. The ad cited a vote Obama cast as an Illinois state senator against a bill mandating the death penalty for gang-related murders — a bill the state’s Republican governor…
New Yorker Wants ET Affairs Commission: To Decide Where Aliens Should Land in NYC
With the recent UFO sighting in NYC, one wonders if this guy is onto something. David Moye writes in AOL News:
New York City is home to practically every ethnic group under the sun, and if one UFO researcher gets his way, it will soon be host to every extraterrestrial species in the universe.
Michael Luckman, author of Alien Rock, has shifted his time from writing books to writing ballot initiatives — specifically one that, if passed, would create an ET Affairs Commission. The panel would consist of seven volunteers who would meet twice a year to gather the most compelling evidence regarding the existence of extraterrestrials and UFOs and post it on the city’s website.
UFO researcher Michael Luckman wants New York voters to decide whether the city should have an ET Affairs Commission to help decide the best place to put a landing site in the city.
The initiative is almost identical…
How To Make Horror Movie Blood
Just in time for your Halloween hijinks, the BBC has an instructional video that shows how to create the artificial blood used in classic horror movies. Their recipe produces blood that not only is rich in color and creepily accurate in texture, but sounds as if it would be delicious to eat.
Teacher Uses “Sexual Harassment Dice” To Punish Elementary School Students
Instead of determining a punishment based on the weight of the crime, a 59-year-old elementary school teacher left it to a throw of the dice. In replace of numbers, these dice read “kiss,” “forgive,” and “snot.” The Mainichi Daily News reports:
A sixth grade primary school teacher is in hot water with parents and the local school board after complaints that he was using kisses and snot to punish his students.
The 59-year-old teacher at Ogi Elementary School in Iruma, Saitama Prefecture, apparently had three dice, one with sides marked with the words “hug” and ” forgiven,” another marked with “kiss,” “snot” and “forgiven” among others, and the third marked with “snot” and “forgiven.” Students who forgot to bring something to class were forced to roll one of the dice. The teacher has apparently admitted to kissing one boy and acting as if he would put snot on one girl. He nicknamed the…
Why You Shouldn’t Vote … Ever
Site editor’s note: This post from DJ Pangburn originally appeared on death + taxes.
What to do if you’re courageous enough to admit the Obama administration and Democrats are full of shit and the Tea Party and Republicans are dangerous and stupid?
Barack Obama the messenger
President Barack Obama soared into the public consciousness with a stirring speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He then took Howard Dean’s example and used the power of the Internet to create a fundraising juggernaut for his historic 2008 Presidential run. With a swiftness not seen since JFK’s political ascendancy, Obama became president and claimed broad power to affect “change” across the country. But Kennedy only had to surmount his Irish Catholic background — Barack Obama had to transcend the fact that he is African-American.
But appearances are, in the final analysis, immaterial. Just as a magician uses scenery and sleight-of-hand to divert the audience’s attention, Barack Obama has…
What if John Adams & Thomas Jefferson Had Made TV Attack Ads in the 1800 Election? (Video)
If you think the ads have been really nasty this campaign season, check out this video from Reason based on actual statements made by the candidates themselves.
“Adams is a hideous hermaphroditical character with neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”
“Jefferson is the son of a half-breed Indian squaw raised on hoe-cakes.”
There can be only ONE!
Subversive Artist Appropriates Scrooge McDuck
Recently, I checked in with my pal Hector Hernandez to see what the Art Czar was up to … In a recent post, the ‘Czar had an abbreviated conversation with subversive pop artist Dave MacDowell:
Art Czar: Tell me about “Duck and Cover”
MacDowell: “Duck and Cover” was painted for a group show at Crewest Gallery in LA. I wanted an urban graffiti vibe to fit with the gallery, so I constructed the spray can out of cardboard and glued it to the canvas. The theme comments on human nature’s natural ability to lift up heros, only to knock them down. How anyone who has an original thought or idea outside of the status quo, usually gets silenced and sacrificed. People in power fear the power of the people.
Amen.
Check out more great posts from the Art Czar!
All Hail The Tea Party
For me this is the clearest sign yet that Rupert Murdoch has turned the Wall Street Journal into just another political mouthpiece, little different in its Republican boosterism from his tabloid New York Post. The Journal’s lead story today, titled “Birth of a Movement” is a fawning assessment of the Tea Party with the message that it’s here to stay and that’s a wonderful thing:
Less than two years ago, Amy Kremer and Jenny Beth Martin were 30-something suburbanites in metro Atlanta, frustrated by recession, dismayed by the election of Barack Obama and waiting for the next chapter of their lives.
Ms. Kremer, a former Delta Air Lines flight attendant, had quit her career to raise her daughter. The child had grown up and just moved out, and now Ms. Kremer was filling her time with two blogs—one on gardening, one on politics.
“I had this empty space in my life,” Ms. Kremer recalls.
Ms.…
Military Lost Communication With 50 Nuclear Missiles
Dr. Strangelove, anyone? Via Wired:
The Air Force swears there was no panic. But for three-quarters of an hour Saturday morning, launch control officers at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming couldn’t reliably communicate or monitor the status of 50 Minuteman III nuclear missiles. Gulp.
Backup security and communications systems, located elsewhere on the base, allowed the intercontinental ballistic missiles to be continually monitored. But the outage is considered serious enough that the very highest rungs on the chain of command — including the President — are being briefed on the incident today.
A single hardware failure appears to have been the root cause of the disruption, which snarled communications on the network that links the five launch control centers and 50 silos of the 319th Missile Squadron. Multiple error codes were reported, including “launch facility down.”
The incident comes at a particularly tricky time for the Obama administration, which is struggling to…
