Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has promised us a permanent Moon base by 2020. Many people have been calling Newt’s vow a publicity stunt, while others have chimed in by attacking the idea of a lunar base in and of itself, with assertions like “real scientists know [a Moon base] is fantasy.” We won’t speak to Newt’s political maneuverings, but we’re sure as hell not going to sit idly by while people bash the feasibility or scientific potential of a lunar settlement. In fact, we’ve got 185 reasons we should set a course straight away …

An Off-World Energy Source: We spoke to astrophysicist Michael Shara — curator of the astrophysics department at the American Museum of Natural History — about the scientific potential of a permanent Moon base, and one of the first things to come up was lunar resource utilization.

“Lunar geology is in its infancy,” he explained. “Helium 3 and rare earth element mining would be a major industry.” What is Helium-3? Remember the stuff they were mining in Duncan Jones’ Moon? That was helium-3 — a non-radioactive isotope of helium with huge potential in nuclear fusion research and alternative energy applications. Yes it really exists, yes it really is rare on Earth, and yes it really could make a one-way-trip to the Moon totally worth it. Not only would it make for a great off-world alternative energy source, it would also provide on-site support for expansion and development on the Moon itself.

Read More from Robert T. Gonzalez on io9.com

Photo: Nina Aldin Thune (CC)

Aaron Cynic writes at As Above, So Below:

Through generation after generation of living in authoritarian structures, we have been bred to believe the only way to govern ourselves is through hierarchies or States.

All systems look like the great pyramid, with a single person or small group at the top, who delineate small pieces of power to subordinates, who then delineate further until the common person merely exists to support the others standing on top.

This happens in almost all social aspects of life – most religious structures, forms of government, education systems, and employment structures operate in this nature.

Because we are confronted first with this idea from childhood, by the time we reach early adulthood, we are already predisposed to recognize and respond to symbols of authority in certain ways.

Though the concept takes a long time to learn, the symbols are simple: A person in blue is a police officer, meant to keep us safe from bad people. A person in business attire is someone we can trust, because he or she is successful. A man with a hat or collar is someone we should listen to when he speaks on matters of faith, because he knows spirituality.

Long before we could rationalize or understand these symbols, we were already indoctrinated to believe that police officers and elected officials have our best interests at heart. We were nurtured on the idea the people we delegate power to will represent our interests, and the people society deems successful should be the ones we cast our votes for. We give these people our money, votes and confidence because we see the symbols of success and believe the bearers of those marks will lead us to our perceived promised land. That is why we give them our confidence.

Read the full post at As Above, So Below

Intellectual self defense for the awakening of the masses. Understand the methods of sophistry which are utilized to enslave and control the minds of humankind.

government (govern = control / ment = mental/mind)

For a list of some of the more common fallacies please visit ww.nizkor.org.

Every single one of the candidates currently running for the Republican nomination is a walking disaster. But one of them, Texas congressman Ron Paul, seems to be getting a disturbing amount of support from liberals. Mostly that’s because his nut-job libertarian views happen to not sound so nutty on a handful of issues. He wants to end the War on Drugs. He is against the death penalty. He would not support a constitutional ban on gay marriage. He was opposed to the War in Iraq and wants to end all American military intervention abroad. All of that sounds pretty good to us left-wing types — downright refreshing coming from a Republican. Some progressives have claimed they’d rather vote for him than for Obama. Even Occupiers have sung his praises.

But if you’re a liberal who supports Ron Paul, you either haven’t been paying enough attention or you’re out of your fucking mind.

Here are 20 reasons why:

1. He wants to repeal the Civil Rights Act. That’s the 1964 law that made segregation illegal and outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin. Paul claims it infringes on people’s freedom. If a restaurant or hotel wants to ban African-Americans, he believes they should be allowed to. As he put it in a speech to Congress: “the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty.”

2. He’s also against the Americans With Disabilities Act. That’s the 1990 bill passed by the first President Bush, which followed up the Civil Rights Act by making it illegal to discriminate against someone because of a disability. Paul wants it gone, too.

3. He is against public health care. You know how you think Americans are crazy because they can’t do any better on universal health care than the watered down bill Obama got through? Well, President Ron Paul would do much, much worse. He thinks that in an entirely private system, poor people would have all of their needs taken care of by charitable doctors who would be willing to work for free. Ron Paul, by the way, is a medical doctor.

4. He wants to dissolve the public education system. He promises to eliminate the Department of Education entirely and leave the question of whether to offer any public education at all up to local governments. He calls public education “socialist” (which we actually agree with, but he, unlike us, doesn’t think that’s a good thing) and says, “I preach home schooling and private schooling.”…

[continues at the little red umbrella]

Religion is one of those big taboo topics that many people are terrified to touch: too afraid that others will question their religious loyalties and just as afraid to step on the minefield that is the overhyped sensitivity of some believers.

And this is precisely why it is so much fun to talk about it.

People, after all, live and die in the names of religious values, so the stakes of what we are playing with couldn’t be any higher. And yet, few fields can make many human beings as unwilling to face the evidence as religion. It is exactly because these ideas are so central to their lives that they don’t want anyone to plant doubts in their minds.

If this is you—if you are afraid of tackling contradictions, if you believe that without blind faith you would be prey to senselessness and desperation, if dealing with complexity sends you running for the reassuring arms of dogma—then do not read any further. What I am about to say will confuse you, anger you and ruin your digestion.

But if you feel like taking a weird, dangerous journey through world religions and running into some of the very odd characters populating them—if you have a taste for paradox and think that questioning authority should be an Olympic sport—then hop on board.

I had a hell of a lot of fun writing 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know: Religion and conveying fifty of the most bizarre and unexpected stories about religion outside of my classroom. So below you’ll find seven of them that best relate the experience of my book (in a Reader’s Digest format).

You will discover that:

1. The institutions, we as a civilization, have considered “sacred” for thousands of years often are not considered that same way in organized religion, when powerful political forces or massive carnal desire enter the picture

2. Universal rights have been a sticky point for a number of religions because of what particular groups would benefit from them

3. Established religions, throughout history, have been a magnet for would-be messiahs, and an opportunity for those clever iconoclasts and tricksters to create their own new “religion” to challenge the old ones; and finally,

4. Any group calling for “Heavenly Peace on Earth” often has ended up killing millions of people in their fervor, and even stranger, the greatest conqueror in human history actually allowed religious tolerance in an truly unprecedented manner that, even today, we have not seen over most of our planet.

Religion is not an easy topic to discuss: it’s one of those things in life that is truly more complicated than it looks, and often, is a very personal matter for a hell of a lot of people. So my goal here is, at a minimum, to try to make thinking about religion enjoyable, and something you would discuss with others, even if you expect a difference of opinion.

[Read "Believe It Or Not: 7 Facts You're Not Supposed To Know About Religion" over at the Huffington Post]

Photo: Peterson (CC)

If Ron Paul or Barney Frank did something like this, I’d be a little bit more inclined to support them, especially concerning presidential bids … Reports Agence France-Presse via the RAW Story:

Janusz Palikot, the leader of a new party which brought in Poland’s first trans-gender and openly gay MPs, launched a drive Friday to legalise marijuana by smoking pot in parliament.

“This is the weed,” he told reporters in his office in the lower house of parliament, lighting up a large incense joint containing what he said was a legal quantity of marijuana.

Palikot said his party had submitted a bill to legalise marijuana.

Earlier on Friday, the philosophy graduate known for his flamboyant political stunts, caused a stir when he announced he would “light up” in parliament.

“I want to condemn the hypocrisy concerning marijuana consumption,” Palikot told reporters. “Someone said they would smoke a joint in parliament and the reaction was tantamount to someone announcing a coup d’etat.” …

Read More: Agence France-Presse via the RAW Story

The Israeli government has repeatedly demanded that Palestinians recognise Israel as a “Jewish state”. Recent developments in the Knesset and High Court are exposing exactly what this means, and in doing so, throw the spotlight on the issue that the ‘peace process’ – and Western governments – refuse to tackle.

On Wednesday, Israel’s High Court rejected a legal challenge to the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, by a six to five vote. The law, first passed as a ‘temporary’ measure in 2003 and renewed ever since, prevents Palestinians from the Occupied Territories (and those from ‘enemy states’) from living with their spouses in Israel.

For thousands of Palestinian families, Israel’s law means a choice between moving abroad, living apart, or living in Israel illegally. No wonder that the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) condemned what it described as a “racist law” for the way it harms “the very texture of the lives of families whose only sin is the Palestinian blood that runs in their veins”…

Read more here.

Lady Gaga allegedly left “large amounts of blood” in a hotel bath. The eccentric singer reportedly shocked staff when she checked out of London’s lavish Intercontinental Hotel last summer and they discovered a pool of red liquid in the tub of her suite.

One housekeeper claimed the pop superstar was “bathing in blood as part of a Satanic ritual”.

She told website Truthquake: “Lady Gaga left large amounts of blood in the suite during a stay this summer. The incident was reported to the concierge, who was told to put it out of her mind.”

Other sources believe Gaga could have been using the red liquid as part of a “weird” stage costume or prop.

Read More: Independent’s website (cached version)

In the latest issue of Orion Magazine, environmental activists Derrick Jensen and Paul Kingsnorth both express their frustrations with the current environmental movement.

Jensen takes movement organizers to task for their drift towards actions that are “fun and sexy.”  ”The fact that so many people routinely call for environmentalism to be more fun and more sexy reveals not only the weakness of our movement but also the utter lack of seriousness with which even many activists approach the problems we face,” he says bitterly.  “When it comes to stopping the murder of the planet, too many environmentalists act more like they’re planning a party than building a movement.”

But let’s face it, there are a lot of people on this planet who find the issues addressed by environmentalism just too scary and depressing to deal with. The environmentalist party-planners are trying to reach these folks, who have been suckled from birth on cheery feel-good media, by presenting environmental action as fun and upbeat, rather than as doom-driven and angst-ridden.  It’s environmentalism on anti-depressants, and it fits a big swath of our population, who don’t want to dwell on anything sad or upsetting, unless maybe it’s a movie guaranteed to ultimately have a happy ending …

Read more here.

At IMAGINE, a clinic organized and run by U of T students, multidisciplinary teams provide medical care to patients who would otherwise go without.

The life of someone studying in a medical field is a busy one, but for a group of University of Toronto students, even the hectic schedule does not stop them from taking on an extra project.

They are volunteers at a clinic called IMAGINE, an acronym for Interprofessional Medical and Allied Groups for Improving Neighbourhood Environments, which runs out of the Queen West Community Health Centre (168 Bathurst Street) on Saturdays. Patients do not need a health card or identification to be seen. Most who come through their doors are homeless or are new immigrants.

The clinic is organized and run by students who see patients under the supervision of a professional in their field. Neither the students nor their preceptors get paid for their hours. They do not accumulate any school credit. But for them, the experience is worth it.

“We’re serving people. We’re serving the population that needs it most. And we’re potentially changing people’s lives and allowing them to get even that first point of access into their lives and seeing what can be changed,” explains Yick Kan Cheung, a 23-year-old student of social work who is one of IMAGINE’s current co-directors…

more on Torontoist

Abby and Robbie Martin discuss the Iowa Caucus: the GOP candidates, the corporate media’s coverage of the events, cherrypicking racist attributes among the contenders, the phasing out of Ron Paul as a “front runner”; election fraud: the fact that there is voting software designed to flip the vote; NDAA: an update of how the legislation was passed and breakdown of what it actually means for citizens living in the US.

With the 2012 presidential election less than a year away, everyone is looking for ways to turn around America with an array of promises on the campaign trail that seemingly give each politician added credence over the others.

Radical times may call for radical ideas. But for Jeff Monson and likeminded others, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to examine that society could better itself if it tried, in turn propelling America’s economy out of the dumps and towards a future full of prospect.

“I think the first thing we need to do is socialize things,” said Monson, who calls himself an anarchist but is perhaps best known outside of politics but in the realm of sports. Monson, 40, is an American mixed martial artist that holds multiple titles across the globe for his athleticism. Currently, Monson holds the world heavyweight championship title in the International Sport Karate Association.

To the fighter, if America reexamined entities made available to the public and offered more fair and affordable services, society would see an improvement.

Roadblocks line the way to that future, however, and Monson says that one of the biggest is the role that big corporations play in the American way of live. President Obama may have campaigned on promises thought to be capable, but Monson says the commander-in-chief has since run into a brick wall. “Now he has to sacrifice a lot of his ideas,” Monson told RT. Although he may have had best intentions at first, politics in America are bought and sold by the corporations, said the fighter. “You have to get all those people out,” he said. “You have to get the people to make a decision. We live in a Democracy, supposedly, but it’s not really a Democracy—it’s a corporatocracy.”

More on RT

One thing we can be certain of is that capitalism will end. Maybe not soon, but probably before too long; humanity has never before managed to craft an eternal social system, after all, and capitalism is a notably more precarious and volatile order than most of those that preceded it.

The very existence of Occupy Wall Street suggests that the end of capitalism has become a bit easier to imagine of late. At first, this imagining took a mostly grim and dystopian form: at the height of the financial crisis, with the global economy seemingly in full collapse, the end of capitalism looked like it might be the beginning of a period of anarchic violence and misery. And still it might, with the Eurozone teetering on the edge of collapse as I write. But more recently, the spread of global protest from Cairo to Madrid to Madison to Wall Street has given the Left some reason to timidly raise its hopes for a better future after capitalism.

Rosa Luxemburg, reacting to the beginnings of World War I, cited a line from Engels: “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.” In that spirit I offer a thought experiment, an attempt to make sense of our possible futures. These are a few of the socialisms we may reach if a resurgent Left is successful, and the barbarisms we may be consigned to if we fail …

Read the rest at Jacobin

The Georgia Guidestones are a collection of standing stones near Elberton, Georgia. Built in 1980, they are primarily composed of six slabs of granite: one central pillar, four “major” stones that fan out from the center, and a capstone. The capstone has engravings on all four of its sides in four different ancient languages, all of which read, “Let these be guidestones to an Age of Reason,” when translated. The major stones are each engraved on both sides, and each side contains text in one of eight modern languages asserting ten guidelines.

These guidelines have proven extremely controversial, causing speculation and rumors of conspiracy that go far beyond northeast Georgia.

The Georgia Guidestones are at once a Rosetta Stone, an astronomical observatory, and a road map for rebuilding civilization. Theories of conspiracy, occultism, and apocalypse surround this monument, and it has been called a “prism of meaning” by many who have studied it. At the heart of this confusion is the missing piece of the puzzle: who was the mystery man that designed and funded the project?

Conspiracy theorists surmise a global plot on the part of shadowy group of men to reduce and subjugate the world’s population and create a “New World Order.” Others believe that the man behind the monument was a Rosicrucian, and that the stones are representative of that group’s occult manifestos. Are the stones proof of a Satanic conspiracy or a testament to a Cold War psychology of nuclear annihilation?

Local historian and Georgia native Raymond Wiley was interviewed for The History Channel’s Brad Meltzer’s Decoded about the Guidestones and is a principal expert for a feature-length documentary currently in production. With local writer K.T. Prime he has written the definitive account of America’s most famous megalithic monument.

The Occupy Wall Street protests have come and mostly gone, and whether they continue to have an impact or not, they have brought an astounding fact to the public’s attention: a mere 1 percent of Americans own just under half of the country’s financial assets and other investments. America, it would seem, is less equitable than ever, thanks to our no-holds-barred capitalist system.

But at another level, something different has been quietly brewing in recent decades: more and more Americans are involved in co-ops, worker-owned companies and other alternatives to the traditional capitalist model. We may, in fact, be moving toward a hybrid system, something different from both traditional capitalism and socialism, without anyone even noticing.

Some 130 million Americans, for example, now participate in the ownership of co-op businesses and credit unions. More than 13 million Americans have become worker-owners of more than 11,000 employee-owned companies, six million more than belong to private-sector unions.

And worker-owned companies make a difference …

Read More: NY Times

First published in 1897, Bram Stoker’s Dracula was destined to become the universally-acknowledged masterwork of vampire fiction, but it was not, by any means, the first of its kind. Stokers genius consisted not in having invented the modern vampire monster, but in the imaginative way he synthesized and expanded upon the ideas that prior authors had already been exploring.

One of these was J. Sheridan Le Fanu, whose 1872 tale Carmilla provided a template for many of Dracula’s best-remembered characters and motifs, including the occult doctor (Dr. Hesselius), and the lonely Gothic castle set in a barbarous region of Europe. Many of the proper names in Dracula, in fact, are direct allusions to Carmilla’s characters and settings: “Karnstein” became “Carfax,” “Reinfeldt” became “Renfield,” and so on. Le Fanu’s protagonist, Laura, corresponds roughly to Stoker’s Mina; both are afflicted young women whose souls come depend upon their families’ efforts to unravel the vampire mystery.

Carmilla is told in the first person, from Laura’s point of view. She is a lonely Englishwoman who lives with her father and governesses in an ancient scholss in Styria (southeast Austria). After receiving word of the sudden death of a would-be guest, Bertha Reinfeldt, Laura and company gather on the castle drawbridge to admire a calm, full-moon night when an out-of-control carriage crashes in upon the scene. A weak, unconscious Carmilla is thrown from the compartment in the accident that ensues. Her “mother,” a mysterious noblewomen, professes to be on an urgent, secret mission, but reluctantly consents to leave Carmilla to recover in the family’s care.

Laura quickly recognizes Carmilla from a dream she had as a child; a dream of being visited in bed at night, and bitten on the shoulder. Carmilla, too, professes to remember Laura from a corresponding dream, wherein she awoke to find herself in an unfamiliar bed chamber, and Laura there. Quickly, they develop an intimate friendship, characterized pressings of hands, kissing of cheeks, and plenty of blushing.

[More at Victorian Gothic]

There’s a tiny 12-person startup churning out of Des Moines, Iowa. Dwolla was founded by 28-year-old Ben Milne; it’s an innovative online payment system that sidesteps credit cards completely.

Milne has no finance background, yet his little operation is moving between $30 and $50 million per month; it’s on track to move more than $350 million in the next year. Unlike PayPal, Dwolla doesn’t take a percentage of the transaction. It only asks for $0.25 whether it’s moving $1 or $1,000.

We interviewed Milne about how he is building a credit card killer and Square rival from the middle of the nation where VCs and press are scarce.

Read more: Business Insider

Durham Crematorium wants to install turbines in two of its burners, which would use the heat generated during the cremation process to provide the same amount of electricity as would power 1,500 televisions.

A third burner is to be used to provide heating for the site’s chapel and its offices. The scheme would be the first of its kind in the UK but industry experts say that it could be followed by other similar projects.

Many crematoria are currently replacing their furnaces, to meet government targets on preventing mercury emissions from escaping into the atmosphere. Up to 16 per cent of all mercury emitted in the UK comes from crematoria because of fillings in teeth. Left unchecked, that figure is predicted to rise to 25 per cent by 2020.

Read More: Telegraph

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Photo: David Shankbone (CC)

Natalie W and Aaron Cynic write at Diatribe Media:

At present, estimates from various cities across North America have highlighted various operational costs of policing Occupy movements in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. According to officials surveyed by the Associated Press, Occupy Wall Street has cost New York City a reported $7 million, Occupy Oakland $2.4 million, Occupy Portland at least $785,000, and those numbers continue to grow as cities continue to deploy riot police to raid or destroy various Occupy encampments. Some may argue that the nationwide Occupy movements waste taxpayer money by tying up police resources in attempts to assemble in public spaces. The argument is flawed, however. City administrations make the choice to spend money on policing Occupy protests.

The mass arrests at peaceful demonstrations prove how removed government is from the needs of its people and how determined it is to silence or ignore the very people it has been created to protect. We, the taxpayers, are all paying money into and for a corrupt system that is persecuting its own people and their first amendment rights. Theoretically, we the 99 percent are paying through taxes, the police and the mayor to represent us and our interests and betterment. What we support with our beliefs, words and dollars should not be a shoeshine for the boot-heel crushing our throat. When the government uses taxpayer monies to violate first amendment rights and the right to peaceably assemble, elected officials choke us all with our hard earned money. The movement of the 99 percent sputters at the incredulity of a broken system.

When police departments commit these free speech violations and ignoring the right to peaceably assemble sponsored by taxpayer dollars, in taxpayers’ names, with taxpayer complacency, all of the taxpaying population is victimized as well. Our collective dollars are funneled toward the abuse and the violence perpetrated against fellow, peaceful people. These peaceful humans, in thousands of cities worldwide, are working towards bettering society overall, improving life for everyone. It’s apparent how deeply the system has cracked since resources for education, employment support, insurance support are instead earmarked and wastefully spent on silencing our voices. The political and justice system have been used brutally to repress this social movement whose goals include establishing direct dialogue, increasing political awareness, combating apathy, and reshaping the concept of community in a peaceful, supportive manner. The system that every one of us pay into is implemented against us to stop that communication and evolution from occurring.

Read the full post at Diatribe Media