informant38
.

-
...But of these sophisms and elenchs of merchandise I skill not...
Milton, Areopagitica

Except he had found the
standing sea-rock that even this last
Temptation breaks on; quieter than death but lovelier; peace
that quiets the desire even of praising it.

Jeffers, Meditation On Saviors


-

31.5.02

ubu web found poetry

Shark Attacks Stinson Beach Surfer Several other surfers were also in the area and some of them reported seeing a 12- to 15-inch dorsal fin above the waterline at the time of the attack.

_U B U W E B__E P C__M P 3__A R C H I V E_ 28. W.S. Merwin | Fear, 1975

Heart of Cheapness Let's do the math here. An estate tax with an exemption of $5 million would affect only a handful of very wealthy families: in 1999 only 3,300 estates had a taxable value of more than $5 million. The average value of those estates was $16 million. If the excess over $5 million were taxed at pre-2001 rates, the average taxed family would be left with $10 million � which doesn't sound like hardship to me � and the government would collect $20 billion in revenue each year. But no; the whole tax must go.
So here are our priorities. Faced with a proposal that would save the lives of eight million people every year, many of them children, we balk at the cost. But when asked to give up revenue equal to twice that cost, in order to allow each of 3,300 lucky families to collect its full $16 million inheritance rather than a mere $10 million, we don't hesitate.

_U B U W E B__E P C__M P 3__A R C H I V E_ Ve ry im po rt an t re so ur ce of am azi ng sound s incl. giacomo ballo the future wined victory guy and burroughs and I didn't get all the way thru the lis t ye t

"The FBI estimates that 19,000 Americans are murdered every year. Compare this to the 56,000 Americans who die every year on the job or from occupational diseases such as black lung and asbestosis and the tens of thousands of other Americans who fall victim to the silent violence of pollution, contaminated foods, hazardous consumer products...."

Semen Magnit {with an 'i'}

sami flag

Weekly Review - May 28, 2002: Harper's Magazine Israeli scientists unveiled their new genetically modified featherless chickens, which are supposed to be cheaper to kill, as they need not be plucked, though the naked birds have been unable to mate, because the males cannot flap their wings, and they are vulnerable to mosquito attacks and disease, and they fall down stunned if they happen to wander out into the sunlight.

Weekly Review - May 28, 2002: Harper's Magazine
Pro-Israel pressure groups were organizing boycotts of major American newspapers such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, as well as many smaller publications, because they feel the news has been insufficiently solicitous of the Israeli point of view: "I would suggest," said one boycott organizer, "that there is no moral equivalence between cold-blooded murder and self-defense." Israeli Defense Forces killed a woman and her 13-year-old daughter because they were working in a field that had been declared off-limits to Palestinians.

OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan Even then, it wasn't without a fight. Ms. Rowley writes that FBI supervisory agent in Washington who had been making the decisions on Minneapolis's requests seemed to have been "consistently, almost deliberately thwarting the Minneapolis FBI agents' efforts." On Sept. 11, just minutes after the attacks began, the supervisory agent in Washington headquarters phoned Minneapolis, and Ms. Rowley took the call. In that call, she says, he "was still attempting to block the search of Moussaoui's computer

Woolite Dark Laundry Fabric Wash , WOOLITE� DARK LAUNDRY has been developed for versatility--not only does it care for fine fabrics, but it also cleans the fabrics and clothes that consumers care about the most, since dark clothes play such an important part in today�s fashions

UNDERNEWS: The daily news service of the Progressive Review his case eventually reached the US Supreme Court. In a unanimous decision, the court held that martial law should be confined to areas of actual war and that Milligan should have been tried in a regular court, not by military tribunal. The court declared: "The Constitution of the United States is the law for rulers and people, equally in war and peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances."

From the Files of Mike Mailway "Lose face" is western lingo for a much more violent expression in Japan: "Kao a tsubursu." Smash, crush, destroy face, physically. We think of loss of face as temporary embarrassment.
Traditionally over there, it's utter devastation.

30.5.02

Pop and Politics Farai Chideya

Rolling Thunder Tour Rolling Thunder Down-Home Democracy

Drug Policy Alliance, formerly The Lindesmith Center--Broadening the Debate on Drugs and Drug Policy

Pop and Politics burning memories

comfusion review - Links lead to Comet mag with the Mark Growden rap

Index: SOUP AS A MEAL

Inside David's Head
{yes yes yes animated gif's yes yes. so cool.}

Comet Magazine- Mark Growden
mark growden's musical influence chart,7 thru 10:

Taking acid and listening to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring when I was 18.

Taking acid and seeing the Art Ensemble of Chicago live when I was 19.

Having all my instruments stolen when I was 24.

Finding an accordion and my singing voice in a basement a week later.

Isabel Jewelry
{I need a set of icons for links credit. it's so time consuming, so non-ego-gratifying to type out the 'via'. but this is via Sterling Bruce's blog of interesting snippets.

CELTIC FINGERSTYLE GUITAR PAGE:TUNINGS The Yellow Pages method of guitar composition, all the rage since the open tuning explosion, turns the creative process on its head. Now the fingers, not the soul, create the music. By making available a selection of easily discoverable licks, the open tuning permits, even tempts the unwary, or lazy composer to substitute a mechanical process of riff hunting for what was once a creative endeavor. The tuning and a game of "hunt and peck" dictate the form and flavor of the composition. The guitar assumes the role of a one-armed bandit that if manipulated enough will produce a pleasing jingle. And like the slot machine, the open tuning eventually produces that pleasing jingle even if the player's brain is fully disengaged throughout the process.

Acoustic Guitar Resources: Technique links and love-pushed tips for the guitarist

Products audiophillatio

FBI Given More Latitude (washingtonpost.com) New Justice Department guidelines to be unveiled today will give FBI agents latitude to monitor Internet sites, libraries and religious institutions without first having to offer evidence of potential criminal activity, officials said yesterday
{one of the ways that so many were crushed in the old days was the refusal to credit the surreal with actuality. you know,this can't be real. it can't be happening.
well, I dunno, Timmy, it looks pretty fucking real to me.
this is unfolding as I thought it would �� first the story comes out. my god! the fbi KNEW about the towers ahead of time,then a space of a day or so. then, but those damn librel laws made them shred the evidence, er sumthin. space of a day or so so, and then it's: well now we have to give the them carte blanche, passepartout, tout de suite��
"hi! c'mon in. want anything? my guns? my wife? my first-born son?"
straight up. they have the mindless resolve, and the insect infrastructure.
but then, we have the heart. and the soul.
should be an interesting summer.}


This Osborn is not only simply a 2 way system. It also eschews the commonly practiced use of multiple drivers. In this Osborn there is only one woofer/midrange driver, not several. And of course only one tweeter driver.

iar There are some truly excellent small and medium speakers on the market, some of which are reviewed here. But unfortunately it does not follow that the large, scaled up, ultimate model from the same manufacturer will sound good. There are now many "ultimate statement" models on the market, but most cannot be sonically recommended at all, and certainly not at their high prices.

Thus, we can count on one hand the truly great sounding large speaker systems in the world. We would include Roger West's Sound Lab A1 electrostatic, the Martin-Logan Statement hybrid electrostatic, the Wilson Grand Slamm, and the speaker under review here, the Osborn Grand Monument Reference.

Right off the bat, it's obvious that the Osborn has crucial advantages over these other great large speaker systems. It is far more efficient, far easier to drive, and can play louder than the electrostatics. At $19,975 it costs a mere fraction of what most of the other great large speakers cost. And it is among the easiest to drive, with your choice of power amp, since its efficiency is moderately high (rated 92 dB) and, more importantly, its impedance does not dip too low (rated 5 ohms minimum).

Buddy Rich at IAR This is dynamite. It's a must have DVD for all of you who like big band, or jazz drumming - and for all of you who want an audiophile showoff DVD that will have your friends bowled over and raving about your system.

The DVD documents the last set performed by Buddy Rich and His Band, live before a studio audience, just a year before his death in 1986. The sense of live audience ambience is electric, the sound of a big band in full cry is spectacular, and Buddy Rich's performances are riveting.

amps In particular, it's worth saying that both the McCormack DNA-500 and the Clayton sound much better than the amps from the prestigious solid state big three: Levinson, Krell, and Jeff Rowland. We emphasize this only because the general market perception is that these big three represent the ultimate luxurious desiderata in solid state, a perception reinforced by most published reviews (from reviewers who, incidentally, live by advertising money). These three brands do indeed represent the ultimate in integrity; they are designed, constructed, and sold with great integrity.
{I know nothing of this personally. just threading along. but my wish list thing would probably have these. and a Mitsu rpm7000.}

SILENCE, PLEASE "Resonance control is very itnportant ... ideally we want there to be no generation of excess noise through the movement which induces a current; in other words, moving current creates a moving field � those two are fixed expressions of the music. If there�s an outside movement which moves the component � the wire, the silicon chip � then that will generate an extra noise component that adds to the intimate expression of the field and the current."

ANDREW'S MUSICIANS' RESOURCES WARNING: Boutique guitars and amps are unreasonably overpriced. Used "vintage" guitars and amps are unreasonably overpriced. Buy only used equipment 1-2 years old. Boycott new overpriced anythings. That is the only way to send a message to manufacturers to price new equipment at reasonable levels. Most "brands" are just marketing companies ("virtual" corporations) that OEM and outsource everything from subcontractors- parts, factory assembly, marketing. All the assembly factories I've seen had minimum wage illegal alien workers.
{andystereo somebody}

29.5.02

the proverbial aeolian harp

KKsound

big big list of sound/audio links

quick mixer

sound check the devices

gadgetlabs is gone

wavesafe

simtel.net huge zip list of audio stuff

hitsquad

way more audiomorpheusgalaxynapstergnutella

Eminem has threatened to beat up a few of his so called "fans". The rapper said bluntly: "I think that sh*t is f*cking bulls*hit. Whoever put my shit on the Internet, I want to meet that motherf***er and beat the sh*t out of him, because I picture this scrawny little dickhead going �I got Eminem's new CD! I got Eminem's new CD! I'm going to put it on the Internet.' I think that anybody who tries to make excuses for that sh*t is a f*cking bitch."

Pakistan and India have moved dangerously close to a war. There are some indications, however, that the tensions might be easing slightly. Pakistan has recalled its peace keeping troops stationed in Sierra Leone, but it is not clear if the troops currently deployed along the Afghanistan border have been moved to the eastern front. In a bid to diffuse the situation, the US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is due to leave for South Asia on July 4.
{from SAND an actively benign outgrowth of the Nautilus Institute}

These images of "real people" - male and female faces, people in robes, hats and boots - may date back 15,000 years. This was long before the rise of the great civilisations and a time when Europe was firmly in the grip of an Ice Age.

The FBI has long denied that Carnivore is an indiscriminate tool which vacuums up the personal correspondence of innocent persons not targeted for surveillance. But an internal memo obtained by EPIC under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) shows that it does in fact gather the communications of innocent third parties illegally. It appears the FBI has been lying about Carnivore all along, and covering up its deficiencies even to the Justice Department.

proof of dark matter, dark energy

28.5.02

MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | But who are the real pirates? When the MPAA complains that it is losing billions to piracy, my first reaction is, so what? The Hollywood studios are already hugely wealthy; their power increases constantly, as does the power of other multinational copyright- and patent-holders such as the pharmaceutical firms
{so say I, so what?}

Signs of Thaw in a Desert of Snow (washingtonpost.com)
One of the elders said that these things never used to happen. It is something new to them."
Near the sea's edge, the ice floes are melting. The hunters are heading out on snowmobiles. Natsiapik Naglingniq knows they are headed into danger, unable to rely on the weather or the ice, which is opening and closing, teasing those who walk across it. Just the other day, a hunter went on the local radio to warn that the ice seems to be melting from the bottom.
{first read 'This Cold Heaven' Gretel Ehrlich's fine graceful deeply humble book weaving her months and years of Greenland time with Knud Rasmussen's epic human endeavors. especially her depiction of the still (at that time anyway) unresolved conflict between traditional and high-tech means of survival. point being that this article glosses over that. point being that that mind-set is a prelude to the delivery of the big 'We all did this.' propaganda. so you can see that ignoring that conflict between old ways and 'progress' makes the actual perpretators harder to pick out in the crowd. there are perpetrators. they aren't everybody. the 'powers that be' is a good place to start looking}

27.5.02

CBC.CA - The National Seven years ago, the Belgium company Biobest started production in Canada in the basement of a house. Now it ships tens of thousands of bumblebee colonies from Leamington, Ontario to farmers across North America every year.

They're hard to grow, these bees. So the method is secret. But the hives are checked dozens of times a day. They're fed, watered, pampered. Richard Ward, the general manager, would probably tuck them in at night if he could.

There are bumblebee hives in various stages of production. At one stage in the development, the computer reproduces the heat and temperature of a mid summer's day.

New 'viagra-like' pill effective for days One of the more frequent problems was that patients often didn't understand the need for sexual stimulation such as foreplay that is required to make Viagra work in the body. "A lot of these men," he said, "thought sexual stimulation just meant swallowing the pill."

Progressive Review Yes, your bum does look smaller when you dress in black, at least if viewed from behind. The reason is that we can only perceive shapes if what we see appears in different shades or colors. If one wore white trousers the shape of your behind could be inferred from the slight shadows cast by its contour. In black clothing, the shadows are invisible and the shape appears flat. This is the reason why people with dark skin often seem to age well compared to pale-skinned people. Wrinkles and lines, which are visible mainly by virtue of the fact that they create shadows, are harder to detect on darker skin.

well that pretty well does it for me. I'm pulling my link to Fimoculous for his jivy and uncalled for wimpish smirkiness. I spent so much time this last couple of years online or onkeyboard or whatever that I found myself relating to people in a nondiscriminatory way. people like Mr. Fimoculous. then slowly realizing that once again the first rush of belonging is an illusion. like I did with all these images I've got tucked away here and there on different websites. at the time it was like having them. keeping them. in a way it was/is. but in a way it's not.
so Fimoculous links to Jeff Bridges with the tag line "celebrity homepages are always funny," or some shit. so I went there cause I've always felt kind of bro-ish toward Mr Bridges and I was thinking it might be another one like what's-her-face Melanie Griffith. all gooshy newage soft candy, but it's great. a big 'fuck this' to all the pseudo-Matrix wimp-camo. and it moves. and the first thing I read was a sincere and lucid homage to McMurtry's rare book cathedral in Anchor, Texas. no wasted design no wasted energy. it may in fact be the shape of things to come. people writing, as in writing their own stuff in their own penmanship. I like it a lot. and I've begun to realize that pronouncing on shit you read in blogdex or metafilter as though you found it your own self is simply more pseudo shit. which is why Barger's robotwisdom is still cool. minimal and credit where due.
��� on a side note: I had this hypogogic flash this a.m. of people having their own icons. like signet rings used to be, the seal that signified. people you know sending email that shows up in your box with an icon you could recognize boom tout suite. eh?

25.5.02

stop it stop it stop it

analogbump

Sainkho Namtchylak

italian music-write-about-it guy

yothu yindi with a neat little audio mixer java applet thing

Namgar Lhasa Buryat singer w/mp3's onsite

kabuki sound

armenian rock art. the old kind

The New Humanist
A realistic biology of the mind, advances in physics, electricity, genetics, neurobiology, engineering, the chemistry of materials�all are challenging basic assumptions of who and what we are, of what it means to be human. The arts and the sciences are again joining together as one culture
��John Brockman��

- I have this hitch in my particular getalong that makes me wonder how much of my world view is a result of my very limited 'view of the world'. I read a lot. a whole lot. jam through more web-based info than most people, eclectically, non-categorically. but I bring prejudice and cultural bias with me no matter what. everyone does.
Ray Kurzweil from whom Brockman emerges in this snippet is in a Long Bet

about the rosy machine future. he's on the pro side all the way. I'm pretty sceptical, as are most of us SF babies from the 50's. I say most b/c Brockman and Kurzweil and others, SF kids among them, whose careers depend, whose lives and whose children's lives depend, on the 'emerging union', are not.
my point would be, it's bias. there's something really really wrong here. I think of it sometimes as if Germany had triumphed in WW2. enough time has gone by and the death camps are shut down, turned into parks, the population now fit, healthy, bright-eyed and optimistic, and the technology of surveillance insures that that stock cliche of the underground ragtaggy rebels with their 'organic' alliegances and their memories of the black time are wiped out. gone. non-existant. so there's no drag on the great flow up and out. the stars are ours. Ayn Rand cybernetically wired into the first immortal transport. but no conscience. no humility.
something bad happened before this. what was it? what do we do about it?
Cain and Abel. Jacob and Esau. it's like that in a way. primal, and dark. one animal fighting with another to survive. only these are human animals. with an overlay of moral code and civic rule. science will show only the animal, the laws being strategies no more true than camoflage or fangs. emotions are genetic at base. in that world the blood on your hands becomes meaningless. that's kind of the point here. it's a super-high-tech return to the might-makes-right we supposedly got above.
so to combat that logical heartlessness you need a clear organized map of the full terrain. which is the spiritual.
only thing is, the old spiritual institutions are collapsing into their foundations. I would suggest that the seeming conflict between those institutions and enlightened scientific inquiry is a smokescreen.
we have to get deeper, more real, more truthful.
but without a plan you stand around lacking all conviction, and the go-getters spurt forward, making you feel potentially like a throwback. which is how many of the elders of the 20th century were treated, as throwbacks, 'old-fashioned', in the way of progress, with their rejection of mass-production, their complaints of the poor quality of factory 'goods'. 'Luddites' as it were.
it's an uncomfortable position, at times. the need to survive can easily make it hypocritical.
other times it feels like fire, like war. adrenalin surges, the battle is here, but the enemy is invisible, the cause is unspoken.
so that's the objective. to name these things. while there's still time.
one of the larger tasks is an accurate detailing of what it is to be human. it's been this given thing for so long, as though 'human' is a constant through our history. I've said for years that that's a scam. that human nature is only a sum of whoever is there to be accounted.
remove all red-haired genes from the pool and human nature no longer has red-headedness as one of its attributes. so it's deceptive for Brockman to speak of what it means to be human. because that is changing, and changing more rapidly than anyone can conceive. and being changed, more to the point. so that the description of human nature is often being delivered by people who are at the very same time changing human nature.
it is my contention that that change is biological, darwinian, just as the eradication of the old ways, the long lines of traditional knowledge that were severed world-wide in the 19th and 20th centuries, was darwinian.
I don't accuse here, not Brockman and Kurzweil, anyway, but it is an important moment. and these are central concepts to the moment. we are in charge of our destiny, in an unprecedented way, but it's naive at least, and dishonorable at worst, to pretend we just suddenly inherited all this from no one but the chaotic past.
though we did of course inherit it, just as the German kids born after the war, rising from the ruins into a broken dream, inherited their world from a horror whose eventual benefits were and are unmentionable.
I'm not suggesting guilty paralysis as a way of being truthful. but I condemn the lie that says there is no past.
there is another way. we have to find it. but it has to be honest.-

24.5.02

Mappa.Mundi Magazine - Internet Prayer Wheel When Jon Postel, the Editor of the Internet RFCs passed away, I spent a long day thinking. I don't know why, but I immediately thought of prayer wheels and explorers. Jon was the creator and maintainer of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). While many people became rich and famous from the companies they founded, it was Jon more than anyone who could lay title to creator of the Internet. (Of course, doing so would be unthinkable to Jon. He was always modest and circumspect�yet always passionate and stubborn�in his beliefs.)

Adidam Emporium - Art - Prints and Specialty The necessary essence of art is love. The true artist is a sacred performer. The true artist must do the magic that causes others to participate in conditional reality in the sacred sense, or the sense of love, in the sense of self-transcendence, in the sense of ecstasy."
- Avatar Adi Da Samraj

{that's bubba free john again.
the site is his syrupy followers' "emporium".
this is my religion here, though it's not my picture or anything, just how I feel about all this horseshit.}

Religious Movements Homepage: Adidam, The Way of the Heart Since the Religious Movements Homepage seeks to promote religious tolerance and appreciation of the positive benefits of pluralism and religious diversity in human cultures, we encourage the use of alternative concepts that do not carry implicit negative stereotypes. For a more detailed discussion of both scholarly and popular usage of the concepts "cult" and "sect," please visit our Conceptualizing "Cult" and "Sect" page, where you will find additional links to related issues.
{ok that's the UniVirg library guys. promoting religious freedom.
THESE GUYS quote antoine 'the little prince' de st exupery as to�"I know but one freedom and that is freedom of the mind"
I'm not picking on bubba free here he's just the alphabeta first on both lists}

Russia: Re-Registration Figures for Religious Organisations 2 April 2001
According to the as yet unpublished official Ministry of Justice figures, 20,215 religious organisations were re-registered in Russia by the deadline of 31 December 2000. Speaking to Keston on 2 April, head of the department for re-registration of religious organisations, Viktor Korolyov, confirmed that 10 per cent of those registered before the adoption of the 1997 law on religion, or approximately 1,500 organisations, had failed to re-register. He stressed, however, that no one was rushing to liquidate them, but that this would take place 'in accordance with the law'.

The Religious Movements Page: Welcome! First, I would invite you to read the mission statement for this site. Second, the site index will give you a better orientation to what is available and how to find it. Third, examine the index of group profiles. Finally, I hope you'll be interested in exploring our offerings on Religious Freedom and Religious Broadcasting. Religious freedom, we argue, is the cornerstone of human liberty.
{this is library as tank. big guns of research and documentation. the truth shall set them free to browse the stacks. though I'm getting mighty intolerant of late. but then....well....you know}

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Country Diary: Northumberland The larger doe is heavily pregnant. Jon comes to fetch me. He is pleased to have found a roe ring on the fringes of the moor; a deer playground used during the rut in late summer.
{just to break up the antichrist heaviness}

Siberian Sectarian Win Elections relations with the surrounding world heated up after a visit to the Vissarionites in October 1995 by the head of the subcommittee of the State Duma on religious education, Vitaly Savitsky. He was accompanied to the commune by reporters, after which there appeared in the mass media a whole series of negative statements about the "totalitarian" character of the sect.
"They showed the local residents the enemy," Kazakov said, "and a wave of violence was raised."
Two months after his visit to the commune, Savitsky died in Petersburg under strange circumstances. The investigation did not establish the involvement of followers of the "new Christ" in this tragedy. And last fall a special committee of the administration of the territory decided not to recommend the "Church of the Last Covenant" for reregistration.
{this is the Vissarionites. off a tip from Tom Tomorrow}

Dr. Steven Greer -- Millennial Cult Leader
Luc Jouret, then 30, a Belgian born in Zaire who believed he was a third
reincarnation of Jesus Christ and that his daughter Emmanuelle, whom he said was immaculately conceived, was the cosmic child.
{that's Jouret of the Order of The Solar Temple. from a disturbing little site, frozen in 2000, whose focus is hard to determine, but it does have a nice list of nutball teams around the world.}

23.5.02

The New York Review of Books: A Farewell to Arms
A morphine IV kept Kerrey's pain at bay all the way to Philadelphia. In the elevator at the hospital, he writes,
I was startled to see a man in a wheelchair. He did not make a sound. He leaned toward me with the weight of his body resting on the elbow of his remaining arm. His right arm was missing above the elbow, as were both of his legs. I looked directly into his face except there was no face. In the place of eyes, nose, and lips was a sunken cavity smooth and free of scars.

The New York Review of Books: A Farewell to Arms
Then, in the spring of 2001, Kerry got shoved back into the public spotlight by claims about a military mission he had commanded in Vietnam. The ensuing uproar confirmed once again that the Vietnam War has permanently insinuated itself into the national imagination, where it resides like a termite, or a virus that periodically becomes virulent.

CNN.com - 'Copy-proof' CDs cracked with marker pen - May 21, 2002 The effect is that the copy-protected disc will play on standard CD players but not on computer CD-Rom drives, some portable devices and even some car stereo systems.

{I'm all 19th century most of the time. Doesn't the CD player hook up ok to the line-in port of the pc? or the Apple? and then pump the tune into the hard drive/net/whatsoever-you-choose? it's all digital info hmmm? sound quality suffers? a lot? I doubt it. so use the CD player like a Zip drive. somebody could maybe make some hardware thus more intentionally directed.
fuck those money-grubbing sucks. think of the first words. think of the patent possibilities.
think. of. the. dull. slow. empty. progress. of human. knowledge. if. each. word. had. been. patented.
MINE!!!! MINE!!!! MINE!!!!! assholes.
think where the net would be now if it was all opensource}

Yahoo! News - Microsoft Describes Software Plans One option, marked "non-Microsoft," blocks Windows from using any of these programs from Microsoft; consumers can select any rival Web browser already installed, for example, such as those offered by America Online, the former Netscape Communications Corp. or the fledgling Opera Software ASA of Norway

ThinkGeek :: Shower Shock Caffeinated Soap

Tom Mabe Third, we will find new and hilarious ways to publicize our shared distaste of being interrupted in our homes night after night by unsolicited phone calls.

PageSix.com: Page Six: MEDIA AIDE BITCHES TOO MUCH By RICHARD JOHNSON with Paula Froelich and Chris Wilson
6. I will occasionally not be at my desk . . . No kidding. I have to p- - too. And I get a lunch hour. Respect it or buy yourself a slave. Kathie Lee [Gifford]'s made a second career out of this.

The memo ends, "That is all - for now. The Assistant."

Hearst, known to partake in "manhunts" where it traces e-mails, phone calls and Web links that employees have made, quickly identified the offending assistant and fired her, sources said. Calls to Hearst were not returned

Metroactive Books | David Brin . "In Britain today, nearly every city has put up hundreds of video cameras in public places, connected to the police stations," he says, "and the public loves them, because crime and hooliganism have plummeted every place that they've been put."
{ I wasn't there at the time but I remember reading that people were overjoyed at the 'plummeting' of mosquitoes when DDT was drenching the wetlands of America.}

Salon.com Technology | Give it away now Scalfani recalls how, in the early 1980s, the music industry promised to lower prices after the CD format caught on. "Everybody remembers that," he says ruefully. "The federal government said they weren't going to tax us anymore after World War II. Yeah, right. It's all just empty promises."

22.5.02

HubbleSite - News&Views - Hubble Sees Bare Neutron Star Streaking Across Space
You may wish to find out the answers to questions such as these:
Why is the neutron star's closeness to Earth and lack of a companion so important to astronomers?
How fast is the neutron star traveling?

From the Files of Mike Mailway Russian scientists discovered that a muscle makes a small noise when it moves. Sounds like a musical note, if greatly amplified. Each muscle makes a different note. The body of a person, wired up like a porcupine, can be played by that person just like an organ. Now they're composing special melodies, the playing of which will give extra exercise to the muscles that need the work.

From the Files of Mike Mailway Q. Where'd we get the word "hello"?
A. From the Anglo-Saxon phrase "be whole" meaning "stay healthy" or something similar.

From the Files of Mike Mailway Is any member of your family more than 88 years old? If so, be advised, that personage got here before the term "birth control." That phrase was coined in 1914

21.5.02

Sonbi
the Korean word sonbi refers to someone with great knowledge and upstanding character, a man who embodies the principles of Confucianism. The sonbi was a member of the scholarly elite, serving his king at court at times and cultivating his personal morality in the countryside when he could not obey the king in good conscience

Folk instruments
Kayagum (12-string zither) : The kayagum is the most representative instrument of Korea. Its origin can be traced back to the Kingdom of Kaya in the sixth century, when the Shilla Kingdom was ruled by King Chinhung. However, the actual production of the first kayagum is presumed to have been much earlier. The instrument is constructed with 12 strings supported by a bridge. The kayagum can be divided into two groups according to the types of music played upon them. The sanjo kayagum is used in folk and original music pieces such as sanjo (solo music with percussion accompaniment) and shinawi (improvisational ensemble music). The chong-ak kayagum is used in chamber music such as yongsan hoesang (mass at the sacred mountain) or to accompany lyric songs. Komun-go (six-string zither): Along with the kayagum, the komun-go is one of the most important Korean instuments. Instruments that appear to be early, primitive forms of the komun-go have been discovered inside ancient Koguryo tombs in various locations. The komun-go that is used today is constructed with six strings and 16 props, and is played with a plectrum. It is used to accompany lyric songs as well as in chamber music and sanjo (solo music with percussion accompaniment).

TATAR MUSIC IN INTERNET
All world has the opportunity to get acquainted with music of Tatarstan composers via Intenet. This became possible due to Dutch pianist Kejs Viring, which holds that the music of our authors is original and bears a charge of energy.

Within three hours in the Internet sounded such orks as "The Silver spoon in clouds ", "Children of Adam", " Conjugal dances of geese ", " Steppe variations ", "Barchans" by M. Shamsutdinova, , "Rivayat " by R. Kalimullin, �Miniatures� by Leonid Ljubovsky, " Pentocordia II " by Anatoly Luppov. All interested persons might set their questions to famous composers Tatarstan.

Conventional tatar music
...however by object of comprehensive scientific research they become only in middle XX century. Conventional tatar music is based on a five-sonorous system, eurysynusic in East, - pentanonic, which one is representative of a Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Hungarian folk music. At the same time on her the songs Mari, Chuvash, mordva - that is peoples are constructed, of historical destiny which one intimately plexiform with a history of the tatar people. However rhythm the tatar songs, specially lingering, essentially differs by availability highly developed ornament, than approachs with eastern traditions. This ornamentation not only gives the special colour to music, but is the relevant means dynamics of his intonational development.

Ethnic Self-Consciousness

What causes ethnic Tatars to lose their ethnic self-consciousness? Among many possible reasons, cultural indoctrination is probably the most important one. When a Russian high school history textbook depicts Tatars as barbarians who did nothing but kill, rape and pillage, and at the same time describes ancient Slavs as "tall, blond, beautiful people" always preoccupied with noble cultural pursuits, the only conclusion that a Tatar schoolboy can make is this: "It is bad to be a Tatar." Very often Tatar school children in Russian schools become targets of ridicule during history lessons. Such cultural indoctrination usually leads to low self-esteem, an ethnic inferiority complex, and an unwillingness to identify oneself as a Tatar. Young people are especially susceptible to such indoctrination.

YellowTimes.org

What happens when the press and the government function as two arms of the same creature? The same thing that was feared in the classic case of the police state: the voice of the press becomes corrupted. It assumes the tinny, inauthentic hysterical tone that we associate with the Pravda of the bad old days. ("Our Great and Wise Leader has proclaimed that our glorious factories have once again surpassed the goals of the Five-Year Plan.") The press no longer guards the public interest, but becomes an instrument of privilege and power. It blurs issues and spews propaganda. Its voice becomes shrill as it praises its master, insisting on its own rightness and glory. That is the American press of 2002 - all lies, all the time.
�Richard Mynick

Precambrian Paleogeography
ecoutes:
Mojave Provence

APOD: 2002 May 21 - The Galactic Center Radio Arc
The Galactic Center Radio Arc
{current name for this. what it is will cause it to be renamed. later.}

20.5.02

Weekly Review - May 21, 2002: Harper's Magazine After failing to diagnose mad cow disease in a dairy cow, a Japanese vet killed herself. "I'm so sorry for my unforgivable fault as a veterinarian,"

Weird & Wonderful Patents - Sound Muffler A device into which a person may yell or scream without disturbing others, allowing him to vent built-up anger and frustration.

Med examiner's office has secret body-parts deal The contract, with New England Eye & Tissue Transplant Bank, has since 1996 guaranteed equipment, staff and cash to the notoriously undermanned M.E.'s office - despite two outside audits since 2000 calling the arrangement a ``conflict of interest.''
In exchange, NEETTB has immediate access to the names of deceased who are prime candidates for tissue donations.
The father of a 20-year-old East Falmouth man who died in a car crash in April 2001 said yesterday he was disturbed he had not been informed of the commercial aspects of donations when phoned by the New England Tissue Bank.
``If I'd known that, I would have insisted he not be used for someone's profit,'' said Norman Sizelove, a computer programmer who lost his eldest son, Robert, to an automobile accident on Route 151.

BBC News | SCI/TECH | China sets date for the Moon A chief scientist with China's Moon exploration programme, Ouyang Ziyuan, said that the country was planning to launch its first mission to the Moon in 2010.
He reportedly told the Beijing Morning Post: "Our long-term goal is to set up a base on the Moon and mine its riches for the benefit of humanity."

Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song: Correspondence, 1940-1950
{a letter from WG to Alan Lomax, in 1942}

Accelerating-Intelligence News: Single Article View The reseachers used AI to teach the computer what a person looks like when talking. The computer then captures images that represent the full range of motion of the mouth and surrounding areas and is able to express any face as a combination of these faces.

The computer then learns how a person expresses every sound, and how it moves from one to the next. For new sounds, the computer can then generate video of the mouth area and superimpose it on the person's face.

Accelerating-Intelligence News: Single Article View Scientists at Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs have developed a microscopy technique that can image individual atoms within a silicon sheet

Accelerating-Intelligence News: Single Article View Paro appears more true-to-life than current entertainment robots, using artificial fur and airbag-based pressure sensors to allow Paro to sense when it is being petted.

Residents showed better emotional states and reported feeling more vigorous.

Ever needed 19 cookies at 2 in the morning? Let me think for a moment of how many people I know in the journalism, film, music and art worlds, in the construction trades and the U.S. military, in the restaurant business and the rag trade, in dentistry and medicine and law and podiatry, who have smoked marijuana. Hmm. In percentages, I'd say: just about everyone.
I mean, George Bush was a party guy at a party school during the late '60s. You telling me he never toked down? I am not believing you
{Jon Carroll confirming the choir's attitude}

at least 1.4 inspiring contemplations In November, his luck ran out at a museum in Lucerne, Switzerland, and he was arrested on charges of stealing a bugle. On learning of the arrest, police said, his mother chopped up the oil paintings, which were left for trash collection, and dumped other art objects in a canal.
The case has stunned art experts because the 60 paintings and 112 objects that police say Breitwieser has admitted stealing were estimated to be worth at least $1.4 billion. Among the paintings destroyed were works by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Corneille de Lyon and Watteau.
His mother, Mireille Breitwieser, 51, was arrested on Tuesday on charges of possessing stolen goods and destroying art.
French investigators said that Stephane Breitwieser, 31, made no attempt to sell the stolen artworks, which came from dozens of museums in France and five neighboring countries. Instead, he kept them in a bedroom.
The police reported that Mireille Breitwieser said she destroyed the art out of anger at her son. But they said they believed that her principal motive was to remove all incriminating evidence against him. Less than one week after his arrest, nothing was found when his mother's home was searched.
According to investigators, Mireille Breitwieser admitted chopping up the oils, many of which were painted on wooden panels. She said that other art objects -- which included silver and ivory statues, 18th century porcelain and medieval weapons as well as ancien

Culture Four factors have shaped traditional Korean architecture: religion, available materials, the natural landscape, and an aesthetic preference for simplicity

The ancient Scottish scale consists of six notes. The lowest note A, was afterwards added, to admit of the minor key in wind instruments. The notes in the diatonic scale were added about the beginning of the fifteenth century, and when music arrived at its present state of perfection, the notes in the chromatic scale were farther added. Although many of the Scottish airs have had the notes last mentioned introduced into them, to please modern taste they can be played without them, and without altering the character of the melody. Any person who understands the ancient scale can at once detect the later additions.
"The Gaelic music consists of different kinds or species. 1. Martial music, the Golltraidheacht of the Irish, and the Brosnachadh Catha of the Gael, consisting of a spirit-stirring measure short and rapid. 2. The Geantraidheacht, or plaintive or sorrowful, a kind of music to which the Highlanders are very partial. The Coronach, or Lament, sung at funerals, is the most noted of this sort. 3. The Suantraidheacht, or composing, calculated to calm the mind, and to lull the person to sleep. 4. Songs of peace, sung at the conclusion of a war. 5. Songs of victory sung by the bards before the king on gaining a victory. 6. Love songs. These last form a considerable part of the national music, the sensibility and tenderness of which excite the passion of love, and stimulated by its influence, the Gael indulge a spirit of the most romantic attachment and adve

Bagpipes of the World

19.5.02

Untitled Document on the accordian and its place in Japanese culture

Transport aerial transport for a number of persons
{from Sr. Da Vinci}

Thumbnails - Moths of North America Select the link below a thumbnail photo to view the full picture

{not flashy. not grab-your-mind interesting, but a lot of work. that's the glassbeadgame hook. and that's what, that's why. it looks comprehensive. and guilt. I've been killing moths pretty regularly since holes started showing up in my clothes a while back}

Arcata Eye Newspaper : Police Log 04-30-02 Party time and noise annoyance time ramped up all over town, from West End Road to 18th Street. It would be interesting to know whether, on the cosmic scale of things, the quantum amount of pleasure derived from gleeful abandon balances out the cumulative annoyance of neighbors.

Insight & Outlook - An Interview with James Hillman
Too many people have been analyzing their pasts, their childhoods, their memories, their parents, and realizing that it doesn't do anything -- or that it doesn't do enough.
London: You're not a very popular figure with the therapy establishment.
Hillman: I'm not critical of the people who do psychotherapy. The therapists in the trenches have to face an awful lot of the social, political, and economic failures of capitalism. They have to take care of all the rejects and failures. They are sincere and work hard with very little credit, and the HMOs and the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies are trying to wipe them out. So certainly I am not attacking them.

anti-something

Southwest Region Ecological Services Welcome to the Mexican Wolf Recovery Program

Our Conscious Mind Could Be An Electromagnetic Field But where, in all this movement of ions and chemicals, is consciousness? Scientists can find no region or structure in the brain that specializes in conscious thinking. Consciousness remains a mystery.
�Consciousness is what makes us 'human,' Professor McFadden said. �Language, creativity, emotions, spirituality, logical deduction, mental arithmetic, our sense of fairness, truth, ethics, are all inconceivable without consciousness.� But what�s it made of?

{there's a meditation diving board I used to use a lot. it's about infinities. not the out there all around every point regressing all the way space unlimited kind of infinities, but the little ones. Xeno's infinities. the ones you get if you go halfway to something and then halfway to it again. and again. and then ramp up and go. everybody can do one or two of those, sort of adjacent to each other. like fractals, or paisleys in the old days, but NOBODY can do em all. and why is that?
BECAUSE THERE'S AN INFINITE AMOUNT OF THEM, THAT'S WHY!
there's an infinite amount of them on the head of a pin. in the point you come to when you go halfway between two other points. in your teeth. in your toothbrush. they're everywhere.
so I used to start there and just... well I dunno. I'd end up somewhere else is all.
the consciousness puzzle is like that too. it's all well and good to diagram the mechanical parts of it, whatever they are. but the MEness, the YOUness of consciousness is not so easy to get on graph paper. and it is my humble opinion that it partakes of those 'micro' (do they own that yet?) infinities. that there's some connection we're mostly unaware of, I don't know what to call it. but it's opposed to the idea of everything being sort of hollow down there past Quark Junction.}

Mexican Wolf Smithsonian National Zoological Park These, and five wild wolves caught in Mexico between 1977 and 1980, became the foundation for a breeding program � and the last hope for saving the subspecies. Mexican wolves are making a comeback in the wild! The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
{not so much the Mexican wolf, though that is good news, but that they were so easily written off as gone. done. not the old ignorance, the old viciousness so close to the causative terror still unnamed, but that the wolves were literally gone. almost. almost. and the belief of an outnumbered but insistent few souls, working without anything more than love itself, have brought them back. or so it seems.
that is the lesson for the rest of us. that no matter what, no matter how little, no matter how hopeless it seems. it's time to try. still. always.}

last year I was bathing in the Library of Congress photograph files and fell into the pool of the Prokudin-Gorski Collection. I was taken by the images from Karelia especially.
especially ones like this
and like this

Then this year just now today, I found these wonderful songs from Karelia. from long ago, though of course Karelia itself is much older. and may in fact be the real setting for the Kalevala

National Anthems, Hymns, Patriotic and Folk Songs links to National Anthems, Religious Music, and Folk Songs
{and thanks to Virginia Tech}

Audio archive of ILLH KarRC RAS. Musical samples karelian heart and soul ecoutez 9

OLD TATAR SONGS What I did below is transferring the songs to the computer

Hans Palm's Accordion Page: My compositions for the Accordion SEE ALSO
Fred Dunn has an impressive collection of his own compositions

KOLIADA - MUSICUS BORTNIANSKII CHAMBER CHOIR Shchedryk (Ephiphany Carol) - M. Leontovych (schedryk.ra, stereo, 162K bytes)
Rachel's Lament - T. Kupchynsky (neplach.ra, stereo, 186K bytes)

Audio archive of ILLH KarRC RAS. Musical samples Tuuli Lilli Lemmingini(mp3)
Ruskei neiyt(mp3)
Hanuri Kun tammihi tammahti (mp3)
Viel niita honkia humisee(mp3)
Tuo on vanha Vinminen(mp3)
Toi Timofii ja sen sai varpusen (mp3)
??????? ?? ????? (mp3)
Meid Vanju (mp3)
Jrven rannalle istuin mina (mp3)
Tere, tere, iye li (mp3)
Vuota jo kargienalla varduottova (mp3)
????????? ?? ??????? (mp3)
?? ?? ??????? ???? (mp3)

18.5.02

zeeza!! YOU FIND YOURSELF ANOTHER
YOU MAY EVEN GET SOME SYMPATHY
IF YOUR GOING BACK IN TIME
IT WAS ME YOU LEFT BEHIND
SO DON'T COME CRYING TO ME
BE BE LA LA
BE BE LA LA STAY AWAY FROM ME

Ardle Enterprises - Ardle Collection of Scottish Snare Drum Beatings

Music and Dance from Rampant Scotland Directory Bagpipes and Pipe Bands

While even casual skygazers are now inspired by the knowledge that there are many distant galaxies like M31, astronomers seriously debated this fundamental concept only 80 years ago.

Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research

John Tyndall, the physicist who was one of the first scientists to recognise the earth's natural greenhouse effect and to identify the relative radiative forcing values of the different greenhouse gases

17.5.02

CBS News | Big Brother Is Watching, Listening | May 15, 2002�19:32:38 after the FBI got interested in remarks Reingold made at his health club. After loudly criticizing the war in Afghanistan, Reingold had some unexpected visitors a few days later.

"I said, you know, 'Who's there?' And they said, 'It's the FBI,'" said Reingold, 60.

Reingold says the two agents wanted to know more about his locker room outburst.

"Someone's reported to us that you've been talking about what happened on 9/11 and terrorism and oil and Afghanistan," Reingold said the agents told him.

CBS, JULY 26, 2001 --progressive News citation Earlier this week, the Justice Department leased a NASA-owned G-3 Gulfstream for a 6-day trip to Western states. Such aircraft cost the government more than $1,600 an hour to fly. When asked whether Ashcroft was paying for any portion of the trips devoted to personal business, a Justice Department spokeswoman declined to respond.

FOXNews.com The researchers admit that the correlation between the ads and increased drug use has not been fully established, but the news is enough for National Office of Drug Control Policy Director John P. Walters to want to can the ads and start anew.
"We can do ads that can both excite curiosity when (they're) targeted at too young an age or (that) suggest everybody's doing it, which undermines what we want in changing behavior. So, we need to make sure we're testing (them) and we intend to move the campaign to older teens and target it there," Walters told Fox News.
{just uhm, wondering here, but uhm, doesn't this pretty much openly say that advertising has a direct effect on uhm, moral decision making?
you know...watch the ads, make the choice? make the choice the way the admakers want? hmmm? could there be, can there be, deeper subtexts? larger moral issues than drug use by teens? that are being influenced, shaded,... well heck, controlled, by advertising? ALL advertising? like say, even, CAR advertising? PESTICIDE advertising? PHARMACEUTICAL advertising? FAST FOOD advertising? MOST advertising? SOME? did I miss the class where we covered that? }

Welcome to WorkingForChange 05.16.02 | Some months ago, a book was published in France entitled 'Osama bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth.' The authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasique, described a connection between the September 11th terrorist attacks and a stalled plan to build a pipeline to exploit the vast natural gas fields along the Caspian Sea in Turkmenistan. Their story pointed damning fingers at American petroleum companies and the Bush administration, citing instances where U.S. anti-terrorism efforts were thwarted in order to smooth the way for the pipeline deal.
Brisard and Dasique were paid little mind by the American news media. Many of their allegations were based upon conjecture, circumstantial evidence, and the words of a dead man named John O'Neill. Their argument seemed plausible enough � the interests of the Bush administration and the energy industry are, in essence, one and the same - but without proper corroboration, there was nowhere for the story to go.

16.5.02

index.page
My ex-girlfriend who happens to be my neighbor, and her son, both think I'm nuts. Among the many valid and invalid reasons for this is the time I made the mistake of telling him that birds talk to me. When I said that, I was convinced of the rightness of it, not the factual rightness but the, holiness I guess, the alignment of that with the beauty and truth of the world. well it wasn't too long afterwards that I realized it was just more proof of my isolation and disconnectedness. Trying to explain what I meant was useless, to minds raised and kept on cartoon level animal spirits. It became a kind of Rubicon. A place I left behind the obedient servant, the good soldier I was half-beaten into becoming.
I woke up this morning thinking about the first time it was driven home to me. I was in Graton, down by the swamp there, my toyota had broken down, I was filled with despair and frustration. didn't know how to fix what I didn't know was wrong with it. I remember saying to myself out loud, "well I'll just kill myself, fuck this shit." and from fairly close by in the bushes came this bird sound that had all the emotional accuracy of any human communication and it was sad, loving, compassionate, and most importantly it had the kind of dependency that is a component of love between equals. the helplessness of women loving men, the bewildered helplessness of men loving women. but not sexual and it's taken more words to describe than there was message there. but it was undeniable. and of course that made me even more frustrated. because then I had to think about all that. and it also meant I couldn't just bail.
so that was the first time in this particular flow. I seem to recall being in a house on Main Street in Salinas with Famous Bob. This would have been in 67 or 68. and we were talking about this and that, I mentioned I'd eaten morning glory seeds some time before, hadn't liked it, and how it had felt , the goofiness of that and his sincerity. and then there was this crescendo. this mounting intensifying symphony of bird song, this is in Salinas right? the pesticide capital of Central California, and this bird choir right outside in the trees, this choir, which is too small a word just lifts and makes it almost impossible to talk . I remember that real clearly. so there was stuff then. probably all along. but I can't get at too much before the Big Disjuncture whenever that was.
so before I disappear into one of the holes of modern living, I wanted to clarify some of what I meant when I said that to my ex-girlfriend's son. there is an obviously limited range of expression available, just technically. only so many notes and combinations. and maybe something about the actual emotional makeup of birds themselves. which puts this right up against the monsters of science who insist without any reason that birds of course have no emotions, and the monsters of religion who insist of course that birds have no souls, and so on. I'm just working with what I can't ignore. and that's what redeems it for me. at that moment in Graton I didn't want it. Wanted to be alone in the world so I could leave. But no.
I have no name for, no idea of, what it is that drives all this. Though I think it's pretty obvious it's bigger and more wonderful than some kind of predator/prey zoology. I just wanted to emphatically state, that I didn't come to the conclusion that birds talk to me because I wanted to see that, far from it, it was the opposite exactly. it has been a comfort at times, and a great burden most of the time, because no message comes through that I can understand that would lead me. just comments mostly. yes. no. oh no. that's right. watch out. uh-oh. like that. except for blue jays. who always seem to be disgusted.


15.5.02

{lucid calm rational article by John Robbins rebutting nonsensical anti-soy propaganda.
can it be doubted any longer? not vegetarianism vs. carnivorism. hype vs. sanity. people who will lie for money and hang the consequences. these are demonic actions. it all seems so matter-of-fact so normal. but we're talking about millions of people's lives here. and with the frankenkitchen con we're talking about an irrevocable alternate future.}


Meanwhile, there are a few more things the dairy industry isn't telling you about the nutritional comparison between cow's milk and soymilk. For example:

Cow's milk provides more than nine times as much saturated fat as soy beverages, so is far more likely to contribute to heart disease.
Soy beverages provide more than 10 times as much essential fatty acids as cow's milk, and so provide a far healthier quality of fat.
Soy beverages are cholesterol-free, while cow's milk contains 34 mg of cholesterol per cup, which again means that cow's milk is far worse for your heart and cardiovascular system.
Soy beverages lower both total and LDL ("bad") cholesterol levels, while cow's milk raises both total and LDL cholesterol levels, providing yet more reasons soymilk is better for your health.
Soy beverages contain numerous protective phytochemicals that may protect against chronic diseases such as heart disease and osteoporosis. Cow's milk contains no phytochemicals.
Men who consume one to two servings of soymilk per day are 70 percent less likely to develop prostate cancer than men who don't.
FRANKENSOY?

There are legitimate questions about soy. One of the most recent, and most disturbing, stems from the fact that two-thirds of the U.S. soybean crop today is genetically engineered. These are beans that have been genetically altered to enable the growing plants to withstand being sprayed with weedkillers, particularly Monsanto's Roundup. Because so much Roundup is used on these crops, the residue levels in the harvested crops greatly exceed what until very recently was the allowable legal limit. For the technology to be commercially viable, the FDA had to triple the residues of Roundup's active ingredients that can remain on the crop. Many scientists have protested that permitting increased residues to enable a company's success reflects an attitude in which corporate interests are given higher priority than public safety, but the increased levels have remained in force.

Does eating genetically engineered soybeans pose potential health risks to people? In 2001, the Los Angeles Times published an expos� revealing that Monsanto's own research had raised many questions about the safety of their Roundup Ready soybeans. Remarkably, the FDA did not call for more testing before allowing these soybeans to flood the marketplace. Since half the soybeans grown in the United States are now Monsanto's Roundup Ready variety, and because soy is contained in such a wide array of processed foods, tens of millions of people are unknowingly eating these experimental foods daily.

gummi bear entree
There's both a specific and a general moral to take away from this result. Matsumoto is not a professional fake-finger scientist; he's a mathematician. He didn't use expensive equipment or a specialized laboratory. He used $10 of ingredients you could buy, and whipped up his gummy fingers in the equivalent of a home kitchen. And he defeated eleven different commercial fingerprint readers, with both optical and capacitive sensors, and some with "live finger detection" features. (Moistening the gummy finger helps defeat sensors that measure moisture or electrical resistance; it takes some practice to get it right.) If he could do this, then any semi-professional can almost certainly do much much more.

http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0205.html#5

love and its price
I began to frequent [Guillaume de Champeaux'] school, but I soon became very unwelcome, for I attempted to refute some of his theses, argued against him, and sometimes won. My successes provoked among the cleverest of my fellow pupils an indignation all the greater because I was the youngest and the most recently arrived. It is from this moment that I date the beginning of my misfortunes [calamitatum], from which I still suffer today. My renown grew daily: envy flamed up against me.

http://www.teamcti.com/pview/prcview.htm

14.5.02

Transylvania, Romania {truly wonderful folksy-normal series of photo essays on transylvanian farming/slaughtering, makes me wish I lived close by there}

13.5.02

The Atlantic | October 2001 | Will the Circle Be Unbroken? | Terkel And then I thought about some of the pictures we see, where he had this neat little crown of thorns and you see a few rivulets of blood coming down. But his face is intact. And according to Scriptures, that is not true. His visage was scarred more than any other man's had ever been or will be.

"And that's when I really was able to assess what Jesus had given for us, the love he had for us.

Mouse Trap
Back to Slaughter Page

The Atlantic | October 2001 | Will the Circle Be Unbroken? | Terkel You try not to identify with the people that you have to deal with. Well, this kid left a note to his father and his brother about how he was tired of being treated as if he were retarded because he was very hard of hearing. He couldn't talk right, and he couldn't hear. And that's what drove this kid to suicide. My big mistake was instead of looking at him and walking out of the room and forgetting about it, I bothered to read the note.

The Atlantic | October 2001 | Will the Circle Be Unbroken? | Terkel as I was beginning to interview people for a new book on death and dying, my wife, Ida, died. She had been my companion for sixty years. She was eighty-seven. A few months later a friend of mine, disturbed by my occasional despondency, burst out, "For chrissake, you've had sixty great years with her!" Ida had lived seventeen years beyond her traditionally allotted three score and ten, though on occasion I'd heard her murmur in surprise, "Why do I still feel like a girl?" They were roller-coaster years we shared, after I first spotted her, in a maroon smock, in 1937.
{Studs Terkel, one of my all-time favorite men.}

Rocky Mountain News: Local Denver has lost a giant.
Gene Amole, a newspaper columnist who celebrated the city he loved and fought those who would change it forever, died Sunday, 12 days shy of his 79th birthday.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Opec chief warned Chavez about coup The warning - revealed by a Newsnight investigation to be shown on BBC2 tonight - explains the swift and safe return of Mr Chavez to power within two days of his April 12 capture by military officers under the direction of the coup leader, Pedro Carmona.
Until now, it was unclear why Mr Carmona - who had declared himself president - and the military chiefs who backed the coup surrendered without firing a shot.
The answer to the mystery, Newsnight was told by a Chavez insider, is that several hundred pro-Chavez troops were hidden in secret corridors under Miraflores, the presidential palace.

Weekly Review - May 14, 2002: Harper's Magazine A 13-year-old girl from Bolivia named Gabriela Azurdy Arrieta opened the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Children. "We want a world fit for children," she said in her speech, "because a world fit for us is a world fit for everyone." The United States, the Vatican, and several Arab countries disrupted the proceedings by pushing anti-abortion and sexual abstinence agendas. America also blocked a statement calling for a ban on the execution of children, a provision of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, which only the United States and Somalia have failed to ratify. "We are trying to lead the world," said one American official.

Roman Catholic Church Shifts Legal Strategy (washingtonpost.com) I'm not going to lay down and die just because I represent the church," said Joseph Sweeney of Halloran & Sage, a law firm in Hartford that defends the Catholic Church in Connecticut. "I attempt to be decent, but I'm not giving away the store."
The 194 Catholic dioceses in the United States, Sweeney noted, do not possess limitless resources -- some estimates put their net worth at about $15 billion. The church and its insurers have already paid out an estimated $1 billion in settlements -- obtained from the sale of assets and from special church "abuse or molestation" liability insurance coverage. And officials expect insurance premiums and settlement costs to mushroom.

Roman Catholic Church Shifts Legal Strategy (washingtonpost.com) In Illinois, church lawyers grilled a victim about the details of his alleged abuse by a priest and asked whether he enjoyed it. In Pennsylvania, a young man who sued the church as a "John Doe" was forced to refile when he turned 18 so he could be identified. In Ohio, a mother whose son wasmolested by a Catholic school principal angrily dropped her suit after her teenage son left a deposition in tears.

Progressive Review, Washington's most unofficial Besieged by hundreds of lawsuits accusing clergy and employees of abusing the faithful, the Catholic Church has responded with a muscular display of legal power. Where once the church tried to quietly settle cases, according to church and plaintiff lawyers, it is now pursuing an aggressive litigation strategy, hiring high-powered law firms and private detectives to examine the personal lives of the church's accusers, fighting to keep documents secret and engaging in new tactics to minimize settlements . . . Church lawyers make no apologies for their tactics. They argue that their ethical obligation is to their client, not to some abstract moral standard.

12.5.02

PAiA: George McDonald George breaks all the rules. He has pitch and volume antennae reversed from their traditional positions, volume is on the right in his setup. He nulls volume so that approaching the antenna increases signal level and nulls pitch so approaching decreases frequency.

SAMPLING ZONE - Audio Sample & Sampling Resources

Photo Gallery Kalib has been working with digital theremins for about 2 years. This photo shows one he installed in a gallery. Three strands of 100' barbed wire act as the antennae for 3 theremins, so chords may be produced. The wires were suspended in the air about 1 foot from the wall creating a cage around a lit 10' weather balloon. Kalib is in a band called Audio Terrorist. Other theremin works by Kalib include a performace art piece involving theremin trash cans and 20 cats.

{theremin fire}

Fotogallery Carolina Eyck theremin soul

DAVE'S THEREMIN MEGALINK PAGE

freesamples.de servicable samples

Audio Samples theremin heart

The Car Enthusiast - The 2001 Tokyo Motor Show - photo gallery and news.

Honda Corporate News / October 17, 2001 UNIBOX, which creates a spacious cabin thanks to effective packaging with full module panels and a visible truss structure
{sort of the same song, but a different emotion. not it. but then there's that ...what was it? with the Maori tattoos? lightning rod. right. the dream of pimpness deferred.}

Isuzu Zen At the heart of the concept is space and freedom. The interior allows for great freedom of use, this is a vehicle which allows you to do what you want. The key words for the Isuzu design team were 'anything, anywhere, anytime and anyone'.
{Tonka to the contrary this is the future. what it should be. anything else is deviant cowardice. and not the future as place, as arrival point, as destination, but the future as ride, movement, progress, journey. the beginning of the path and the step opening out. the world in which this vehicle is a commonplace is a world of human triumph. true winning. not violent dominance but evolution WITHIN the confines of life. health. nobility. humble success. poetic craft.}

Jordan Times (News Section) Jenin Zaal Abu Ruqti, a 15-year-old girl from Ramallah, said the delegation hoped for peace and saw Israeli children as allies in the effort to end the fighting.
�We love everybody. We are children. We don't hate anybody,� she said. �We came here with a voice of peace from all the Palestinian children.�

Jordan Times (News Section) �It is a very important message to the Israeli government, the Arab world and the international community. There is a peace camp in Israel and it is raising its voice,� he said

CNEWS child hooker ring But the operation itself involved dozens of supposedly legal agencies fronting for pimps, comprising about "90 per cent" of escort advertisements in the city's yellow pages, said police.

9.5.02

closer in

8.5.02

noise

7.5.02

Weekly Review - May 7, 2002: Harper's Magazine Pipe bombs were found in rural mailboxes in Iowa and Illinois and Nebraska. Scientists implanted electrodes in the brains of rats and made them climb trees and perform other tricks by remote control. "They love to get picked up," said one scientist, "and they don't even have to be sacrificed because the longer we use them the better they get."

webdogs plate reconstructions {ok Pangaea. ok ok. but always every time they have this huge landmass and it's all oooh and ahhh and nobody says what was what on the other side. all ocean? I think not. I think not indeed.} nice little graphic tho

This is your brain on ecstasy

Fred Milton's loss poetic

Text of Note Left in Mailboxes (washingtonpost.com)
I'm here to help you realize/ understand that you will live no matter what! It is up to you people to open your hearts and minds. There is no such thing as death. The people I've dismissed from this reality are not at all dead.
{this is religion in a way. solo. nuts. and mad-dog ugly. but there's that heaven thing clear as a bell.
"Listen People! You don't die. I know this! Because.....well, here! I'll show you ! "
Hey! Where'd he go?}

6.5.02

Rudy Rucker's Home Page well yeah

15footstick :: It is what it is
lots of links
lots
really a lot of links

what Franswa has been denied access to the South African consulate and his family in violation of international legal treaties. His mail is sent 4th class rather than air mail, which takes weeks to reach his government. He is subject to daily racist treatment at the hands of the Aryan Brotherhood, a well-documented prison gang rampant in the US prison system and in Alaska.

The Kakapo (Strigops Habroptilus) . They became flightless, as there was nothing to fly and escape from. Now, their flightlessness renders them almost defenceless. When confronted by an enemy, they neither attack nor retreat. The kakapo's only ingrained way of dealing with danger is to become absolutely still and allow it's feathers to act as camouflage.

BBC News | EUROPE | Dutch far-right leader shot dead The Dutch right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn has been shot dead.

Chicago Tribune: Afghan laws still repress women
Her crime: running away from the 45-year-old husband she was forced to marry.

In fact, the jail is filled with teenage girls accused of crimes ranging from falling in love to having illicit affairs, from leaving unbending parents to running away from abusive husbands.

Taliban-style executions may be gone, but Islamic law and rigid cultural traditions persist in Afghanistan. The country still relies on Islamic law dating to the 7th Century.

The U.S.-supported government of interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai says it still will uphold these laws, although perhaps not as strictly as the Taliban. Islamic laws allow women the right to turn down their parents' choice of husbands, but enforce harsh punishment for sex outside marriage.

Tribal laws, on the other hand, allow relatives to imprison and even kill young women who lose their virginity, bring shame to their family by falling in love with unacceptable suitors or even seek a divorce.

Poetry Daily: Today's Poem
...
and jet travel blinked across the sky. Rain fell.
Snow covered the roads, and wind worked the fields
where once in a while a farmhouse crouched,
creaking and sighing, thin windows whistling
...

Michelle Boisseau

From the Files of Mike Mailway
Q. Who is "Roy G. Biv"?
A. Nobody. It's an acronym to remember the primary colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. What, you say indigo isn't a primary color? None other than Sir Isaac Newton said it was. Some experts claim there are only three, but they don't agree on which three.

News From The Woods - February 20, 2002
redneck etiquette:
Dim your headlights for approaching vehicles, even if the gun is loaded and the deer is in sight.
When approaching a four-way stop, the vehicle with the largest tires always has the right of way.
Never tow another car using pantyhose and duct tape.
When sending your wife down the road with a gas can, it is impolite to ask her to bring back beer.

5.5.02

poem

finding out about the Masons from the Masons

Tom Waits "Sometimes they're coming so fast there's not enough to catch them in," he said. "And other days you have to do a rain dance for it. You wait. I've got tape recorders all over the house. I can scribble notes on a napkin. But what I've really done is learn to exercise my memory. If I have a melody in my head, my challenge is to keep it in my head all day. And then try to sit down to dinner, forget it and then go back in the car and see if I can remember it again. I think if this is a really good melody it'll never leave me. Some you lose. A lot of them get away. Those are the best songs, the ones that got away."

4.5.02

art connection ringing The performance begins with the first phone call and ends either when one of the phones drops its connection or when the batteries of the phones begin to die...

IAMAS > introduction > Artist In Residence!!!!!

Buzz Club Press Release Some participating artists include: Hideyuki Tanaka, Pierre Taki, Delaware, Nakagawa Sochi, Gabin Ito, Toshio Iwai, Exonemo, Yuka Wake, Taka Furuhashi, Sousei Kazuki, Tycoon Graphics, Tugboat, TGV, Groovisions, Kouji Morimoto, Katsuhiro Otomo, Masaki Tamra, Ryota Kuwakubo, Hiroshige Fukuhara, Katsuya Terada, Midori Araki, Ages 5 & Up, Kyupi Kyupi, Tokiharu Noto, Stereotype Produkts, Keiji Ito, Taiyo Matsumoto, Takayuki Takeya, Kouki Hasei, Hironori Murai, Hanako Kunishi, Hitomi Uchikura, Dai Okazaki/Smelly, Nihon-Ishina and Motoshi Sato.

GBN: The New View on the Next Decade At a time when we�re entering a new stage of globalization that cries out for more coordination of national policies at the global level, Schwartz sees the United States becoming the rogue superpower, increasingly isolated and tearing down what international institutions we have. And, as always, Schwartz was surprising. He ended the interview with quick hits on many surprising but inevitable developments that businesses must be aware of in the decade to come.

Resonance of 4 Resonance of 4 is an interactive audio-visual installation which allows four people to create one musical composition in cooperation with each other. In this installation, four players are given different tones with which they can compose their own melodies. Each person uses a mouse to place dots on four grid images projected onto the floor.
My hope is that each player listens to the melodies which are being
created by the other players, and then tries to change their own
melody to make better harmony. In this way, the installation will not
only generate a resonance of sounds, but will create
a resonance of minds between the four players Toshio Iwai

William H. Calvin, "Pumping Up Intelligence," chapter for Sternberg book (4 March 1999 DRAFT) The title is not a metaphor, though past tense might be better as this chapter is about how each of the many hundred abrupt coolings of the last several million years could have served as a pump stroke, each elevating intelligence a small increment - even though what natural selection was operating on was not intelligence per se.

GBN Global Business Network

Color Photo: Connection Machine CM-2{jumped in through the window like a burglar. then it's like....whaaa? what IS that thng?}

Long Bets� Bet 1�Turing Test Properly used, metaphors are a step on the way to development of scientific theory. Stretched beyond their bounds, the metaphors lose utility and have to be abandoned by science if it is not to be led astray. My prediction is that contemporary metaphors of brain-as-computer and mental activity-as-information processing will in time also be superceded and will not prove to be a basis on which to build human-level intelligent machines (if indeed any such basis ever exists).
Ray Kurzweil is to be congratulated on his vision and passion, regardless of who wins or loses the bet. In the end, I think Ray is smarter and more capable than any machine is going to be, as his vision and passion reflect qualities of the human condition no machine is going to successfully emulate over the term of the bet. I look forward to comparing notes with him in 2029.
Mitch Kapor

{brain as fire. as controlled, contained fire. sun pieces held in soft costume}

ReasonablyClever.Com: Christopher Doyle Presents the Mini-Mizer! hold your own self close

3.5.02

W.S. Merwin interview 1982 or thereabouts

UNDERNEWS: The daily news service of the Progressive Review, Washington's most unofficial source
the electronic intifada ALI ABUNIMAH ��
On the one hand the Israeli tactic has been to exaggerate the claims Palestinians have made about Jenin, saying that some talked about thousands killed (there have been no such charges), and on the other, the Israelis are saying that if they did not deliberately massacre hundreds of civilians then there were no war crimes at all and no case to answer. Much is being made of the reports that 'only' some fifty bodies have been found. The first hand reports I heard from Jenin, from Kathy Kelly and Jeff Guntzel, including photographs of funerals, are that people, unable to wait any longer for the international aid that never came are burying their own dead. In an area which has been described by many witnesses as resembling one struck by a serious earthquake, people are digging with their bare hands and cannot get deep down to the basements where whole families were said to be hiding. Israel still refuses to allow heavy equipment into the camp. And the reports that Israel took away bodies also need to be investigated.

{and hey! some rabbi back east says Jews should boycott the NYtimes,or something. the urge to surrender to blanket prejudice is getting stronger as this shit deepens. I have to force myself to remember how many brave people are linked through no fault of their own to the cowards who shriek their fear so publicly. and hide behind the victims of Aryan euthanasia. literally using the dead as shields for their own cowardice. that disgust so easily becomes something wrong. and like that room full of gasoline the present moment reeks of potential disaster. conflagration. holocaust. apocalypse. }

Jordan Times (News Section) Last week, the Norwegian Red Cross dispatched a team of demining experts who are also in charge of securing the camp's damaged houses and preventing them from collapsing.
A French team also arrived Thursday to further alert the population to the danger of explosives, but it will not be demining the camp.
�The Norwegian team has left and the French team will focus its efforts on crowd control, the situation is very precarious,� said Bainvel

Teacher Held in Kidnapping
Tanya Joan Hadden, 33, a Cajon High School teacher, and Richard Pena, a 15-year-old freshman, were found by police investigators in a room at the $39-a-night New Frontier Hotel & Gambling Hall, where Elvis Presley reportedly played his first Vegas gig in 1956.

Hadden was arrested in Las Vegas on suspicion of first-degree kidnapping for bringing a minor across state lines, and will be charged in San Bernardino with the unlawful "taking" of a child, said Lt. Frank Mankin of the San Bernardino Police Department. Both charges are felonies, and a school district official said that Hadden will probably be placed on administrative leave while the school conducts its own investigation, and then fired.
{ then a kid in a different part of town takes his assault rifle to school, opens it up on a different science teacher, and if he doesn't do his own self they'll arrest him as an adult. and charge him as an adult. and try him as an adult. and punish him as an adult.
the place in the logical train where it all breaks down is the idea that societies can't be mentally incompetent. but they can. and suicidal. and homicidal. and just plain nuts. oh yes they can.}

Making mistakes more beneficial than avoiding them for some people Error encouragement, she explains, allows individuals to explore and experiment and learn from their mistakes. This is in contrast to error avoidance training which discourages individuals from making mistakes.
The effectiveness of each of these training methods was examined on people with different levels of intelligence, openness to experience and conscientiousness. Payne and her colleagues found that the effectiveness of a particular training method depends greatly on the type of person receiving the training.
People with higher intelligence, she notes, perform better and show greater confidence in their ability to perform the behaviors learned in training when encouraged to make errors. The same holds true for people who exhibit high levels of openness to experience, she adds.

Study suggests global extinction crisis more serious than previously thought Ehrlich predicted that, when the problem of population disappearance is better understood, the extinction crisis will be seen as even more serious than scientists had assumed.
�We�re talking about nothing less than the preservation of human life-support systems,� he added. �We neglect the issue at our peril.�

Study suggests global extinction crisis more serious than previously thought Population extinctions are a more sensitive indicator of the loss of biological capital than species extinctions,� they wrote. �This is because many of the species that have lost a substantial portion of their populations are unlikely to go globally extinct and enter the species extinction statistics in the foreseeable future.�
{this seems vivid but to many it's a most obscure point. and needs explaining in still-more lay language. which I would do if I wasn't preparing for a somewhat harder task.}

SOME SMOKERS CAN'T QUIT EVEN AFTER SUFFERING HEAD AND NECK CANCERS The American Cancer Society estimates that there were more than 30,000 new cases of head and neck cancers last year. Eighty-five percent of cases are associated with tobacco use, according to government statistics.

Study of letters to newspaper editors suggests Sept. 11 polarized country Other researchers have discovered that among other traits, people susceptible to authoritarian views tend to hold conventional middle-class values, are generally submissive to and uncritical of authorities and tend to look for, condemn and sometimes even punish those who violate the conventions, he said. Such people also tend to oppose imaginative and tender-minded others, think rigidly, identify with powerful figures, think cynically of humanity in general and show an exaggerated concern with sexual �goings-on.�

{bet ya five big ones they almost universally were corporally punished as kids. hard. pavlovian kickback. it's about that dark dark place in the soul where the bad stuff is, where it gets put. projection, submission, and fear, unreasoning fear seeking its explanation after the fact.}

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