sloppyunruh.com

Media mob, Vermin Supreme chase Ron Paul from campaign stop

Wes Unruh — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:21:41 +0000

“Ron Paul: We have you surrounded. We are the media,” sounded the voice from a megaphone as Paul staffers ushered him into a waiting SUV, just minutes after he arrived at the restaurant.

Holding the megaphone was a man dressed roughly as a wizard, with shaggy hair and tousled beard, wearing a massive black boot upside down on his head.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/gop-presidential-primary/203039-media-mob-forces-paul-to-leave-nh-campaign-event-early

Lance Wallnau Says Seven Mountains Dominionism is the Answer to Occupy Wall Street | Right Wing Watch

Wes Unruh — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 16:38:36 +0000

Lance Wallnau, a major proponent of Seven Mountains Dominionism, explained that the Occupy Wall Street movement emerged as a result of the fact that the Devil, and not right-wing Christians, was in charge of Wall Street banks, which he says led to the economic crisis. Wallnau said that along with the economics mountain, “the Devil will send kings” to different cultural mountains, such as government media, arts and education, to “screw it up.”

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/lance-wallnau-says-seven-mountains-dominionism-answer-occupy-wall-street

so what if we’re wired to be biased against exactly 38% of everything we encounter?

Wes Unruh — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:21:11 +0000

I don’t usually prelude the clipped copy that I feature here on my scraps blog, but I find this of particular note. Following a thread on ask.metafilter, I came across this particular comment, which lead to this bit of insight from ‘Craig’s Spring Branch Blog’ that I feel I ought to share:

The earliest cite I found was Osgood and Richard, “From yang and yin to and or but” from 1973. Osgood apparently coined the description “golden section” after the golden ratio in ancient Greek geometry. 1 : .616 which are the proportions of the edifice of the Parthenon, for example. There is a trove of material on google scholar with many examples and themes. The most interesting of which is that we may even have an essential brain circuit for sorting whatever we encounter in our environment, such that we find 62 percent of it appealing at a subconscious lever and 38 percent of it unappealing.

Stigma is specifically analyzed within this paradigm in Raskin, Harasym, Mercuri, and Widrick, “Construing stigmatized identities: a golden section study”. The most stigmatized are the homeless and the mentally ill. They are looked down upon even more harshly than criminals. Criminals are of only slightly lower status than politicians. It was not clear whether we should laugh or cry about this last finding. I did neither but merely noted it.

http://craigsspringbranchblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/zombies.html

Christian Same-Sex Marriage Used to Exist…

Wes Unruh — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 16:24:52 +0000

Prof. Boswell’s academic study is so well researched and documented that it poses fundamental questions for both modern church leaders and heterosexual Christians about their own modern attitudes towards homosexuality.

For the Church to ignore the evidence in its own archives would be cowardly and deceptive. The evidence convincingly shows that what the modern church claims has always been its unchanging attitude towards homosexuality is, in fact, nothing of the sort.

http://www.christianity-revealed.com/cr/files/whensamesexmarriagewasachristianrite.html

Justice Department seeks to make lying online a crime

Wes Unruh — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 06:08:14 +0000

“It basically leaves it up to a website owner to determine what is a crime,” U.S. District Judge George Wu said in 2009. “And therefore it criminalizes what would be a breach of contract.”

But an odd coalition including the ACLU and the conservative FreedomWorks sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee in August arguing that the Justice Department’s request would amount to a “gross misuse of the law.”

http://m.examiner.com/computer-user-in-national/justice-department-seeks-to-make-lying-online-a-crime

Why Labeling Angelina Jolie’s Hard-Hitting Film About Rape in Bosnia a “Vanity Project” Is Sexist | Artinfo

Wes Unruh — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 17:48:27 +0000

Given that the film has no stars and addresses the rapes of tens of thousands of women during a war scarcely on Americans’ radar since it ended 16 years ago, Jolie’s involvement in it is undoubtedly its strongest selling point. Landing as it does during a season packed with spectacular entertainment movies, it needs her to promote it.

“The people felt as though the world had forgotten them,” Jolie said of the Bosnian war victims in an interview with Janine di Giovanni in Newsweek. “It was a time of great pain, and I wanted to depict how courageous people were — without offending anyone. It was made to remind everyone of the war — but only a small group of people will probably understand.”

http://artinfo.com/news/story/754565/why-labeling-angelina-jolies-hard-hitting-film-about-rape-in-bosnia-a-vanity-project-is-sexist?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+artinfo-all+%28All+Content+%7C+ARTINFO%29

The Associated Press: MLK parade bomber sentenced to 32 years in prison

Wes Unruh — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 20:52:32 +0000

Federal officials have said Harpham acted alone.

The pipe bomb was loaded with lead fishing weights coated in rat poison, which can inhibit blood clotting in wounds, officials have said. The bomb was discovered and disabled before it could explode.

The parade on Jan. 17 drew a crowd of about 2,000 on a cold winter morning. It was forced onto an alternative route after the bomb was found. Harpham walked in the parade and took pictures of young black children and of a Jewish man who was wearing a yarmulke, prosecutors have said.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gXstIoEDE51cc2j-dsCfObM1VlZQ?docId=907b4834cd37421fb9c65dcf093c3b5d

When Your Criminal Past Isn’t Yours

Wes Unruh — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 21:11:16 +0000

Two decades ago, if a county wanted to update someone’s criminal record, a clerk had to put a piece of paper in a file. And if you wanted to read about someone’s criminal past, you had to walk into a courthouse and thumb through it. Today, half the courts in the United States put criminal records on their public websites.

Digitization was supposed to make criminal records easier to access and easier to update. To protect privacy, laws were passed requiring courts to redact some information, such as birth dates and Social Security numbers, before they put records online. But digitization perpetuates errors.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TEC_BROKEN_RECORDS?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Neo-Nazi Leader August Kreis Sentenced for Fraud via @SPLCenter

Wes Unruh — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 19:30:19 +0000

But ever defiant, despite pleading guilty in August, Kreis remained unapologetic for his actions and the life he has led. “I don’t preach to hurt anybody, except the Jews, and I’ll keep doing that,” he said. “But that’s my First Amendment rights. As long as I obey God’s laws, I don’t care about anything else.”

The investigation that led to Kreis being charged began with a statement he made in 2005 to CNN, when he suggested the Aryan Nations form an alliance with Al Qaeda. “You say they’re terrorists, I say they’re freedom fighters,” Kreis said. “I want to instill the same jihadic feeling in our peoples’ heart,in the Aryan race, that they have for their father, who they call Allah.”

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/12/15/neo-nazi-leader-august-kreis-sentenced-for-fraud/

#GOP Primary through eyes of SPIEGEL ONLINE

Wes Unruh — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 22:05:36 +0000

Africa is a country. In Libya, the Taliban reigns. Muslims are terrorists; most immigrants are criminal; all Occupy protesters are dirty. And women who feel sexually harassed — well, they shouldn’t make such a big deal about it.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the US Republicans. Or rather, to the twisted world of what they call their presidential campaigns. For months now, they’ve been traipsing around the country with their traveling circus, from one debate to the next, one scandal to another, putting themselves forward for what’s still the most powerful job in the world.

As it turns out, there are no limits to how far they will stoop.

http://m.spiegel.de/international/world/a-800850.html#spRedirectedFrom=www

Google Joins the CNN Freedom Project

Wes Unruh — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 16:22:14 +0000

According to estimates by grant recipients, Google’s support will free an estimated 12,000 people from slavery and prevent millions more from being victimized. Numbers vary widely, but policymakers, activists and scholars estimate the number of modern-day slaves at somewhere between 10 million and 30 million people worldwide.

Google’s director of charitable giving, Jacquelline Fuller, said the company chose to spotlight the issue of slavery because the topic of freedom — “the most basic of human rights,” as she puts it — resonated with company employees around the world.

http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/14/google-joins-fight-against-slavery/

Report tracks explosion of religious lobbying in Washington

Wes Unruh — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 16:15:35 +0000

http://www.religiousrightwatch.com/2011/12/report-tracks-explosion-of-religious-lobbying-in-washington-cnn.html

More than 200 groups are doing faith-related lobbying and advocacy in the nation’s capital, compared to fewer than 40 in 1970, according to the report. Put together, the groups employ at least 1,000 people.

The report, released Monday by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, found that religious groups spend $390 million a year to influence U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

Anti-Abortion Extremist Now Attacking Gay-Friendly Churches | via @SPLCenter

Wes Unruh — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 03:57:02 +0000

There’s good reason to think that Spitz, who routinely describes gay people as child molesters, “sex perverts” and “sodomites,” takes this verse literally. The Chesapeake, Va.-based minister is best known as the man behind the Army of God (AOG) website, which applauds the murderers of physicians, reproductive clinic workers, secretaries and escorts and lashes out against other perceived “enemies” such as the LGBT community.

Spitz is a signatory to the so-called “Defensive Action Statement,” which describes the murder of doctors who provide abortion as “justifiable,” a “godly action.” The AOG site celebrates as “heroes of the faith” the violent criminals who, saying they were called to their work directly by God, have carried out such actions. (There is no evidence to suggest that AOG is a formally structured group, rather than simply a concept, though many such criminals describe themselves as “members.”)

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/12/09/anti-abortion-extremist-now-attacking-gay-friendly-churches/

In third-degree burn treatment, hydrogel helps grow new, scar-free skin

Wes Unruh — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 03:44:32 +0000

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-12/jhu-itb121311.php

“John Harmon, a professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and director of surgical research at Bayview, described the mouse study results as “absolutely remarkable. We got complete skin regeneration, which never happens in typical burn wound treatment.”

how messages ‘stick’

Wes Unruh — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 17:28:32 +0000

Messages that survive and not die on the message vine are those that are: 1 Simple, brief as possible but still profound; 2 Unexpected, sufficiently surprising to catch the attention of the audience; 3 Concrete, detailed examples based on real life experiences; 4 Credible, delivered by someone the audience can trust; 5 Emotional, makes audience feel as well as think, and 6 Tells a Story, in a narrative that can be remembered and retold to others.

via The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo.

The Subconscious Shelf – NYTimes.com

Wes Unruh — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:14:57 +0000

More than a millennium before print, Seneca criticized “those who displayed scrolls with decorated knobs and colored labels rather than reading them,” noting, “it is in the homes of the idlest men that you find the biggest libraries.” And before there were coffee-table books a 1962-vintage replacement for “grand-piano books”, “furniture books” had already attracted scorn. An 1859 article of that title compared bibliophiles who cared more about bindings than about words to lovers who “think more of the jewels of one’s mistress than of her native charms.”Lord Chesterfield, writing in 1749, agreed. “Due attention to the inside of books, and due contempt for the outside,” he pronounced in a letter to his son, “is the proper relation between a man of sense and his books.” A century later, an evangelical magazine contrasted the good child who “puts books into his head” with the lazy child whose books are “only on your shelves.”Because books can be owned without being read and read without being owned, bookshelves reveal at once our most private selves and our most public personas.

via The Subconscious Shelf – NYTimes.com.

Occupy Oakland videographer shot by police with rubber bullet, for no apparent reason | Video Cafe

Wes Unruh — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 06:05:53 +0000

Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminal justice professor who’s an expert in police decision-making and use of force, said the video left him “astonished, amazed and embarrassed.”
“Unless there’s something we don’t know, that’s one of the most outrageous uses of a firearm that I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Unless there’s a threat that you can’t see in the video, that just looks like absolute punishment, which is the worst type of excessive force.”

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/scarce/occupy-oakland-videographer-shot-police-rub

Siskiyou sheriff’s life-and-death rhetoric alarms tribes, environmental groups

Wes Unruh — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 04:31:42 +0000

This is alarming rhetoric…

His message drew hearty applause from the audience, many of whom feel literally under attack. But it worries American Indian tribe members, fisheries regulators and environmentalists in a legal and policy fight to protect salmon. They say the rhetoric might inflame a tense situation, leading to possible retaliation from those who might take Lopey’s message too far.
Lopey, a retired Army Reserve colonel who served in Afghanistan, likened efforts at dam removal and restrictions on irrigation water and access to public forest land to friendly fire. The crowd cheered when he said he was sworn to protect the U.S. Constitution and the citizenry from all enemies, “both foreign and domestic.”
“We are, right now, in a fight for our survival,” he told them. “We are fighting not only for ourselves. More importantly, we’re fighting for the survival of our counties, of our local communities and our children and our grandchildren. If we don’t save things like agriculture and we let them take our water and land and push us off, we won’t have any public safety. We’ll have no quality of life. We’ll have nothing.”

http://www.redding.com/news/2011/nov/05/lopey-siskiyou-klamath-scott-shasta/

Cain’s support dips after sex accusations: poll

Wes Unruh — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 04:18:30 +0000

Finally it begins to register…

At least three women have accused Cain of sexual harassment from his time as the restaurant industry’s top lobbyist. Cain has given conflicting accounts of the cases since the news broke a week ago by news website Politico. He insists the claims were baseless and that he was wrongfully accused.
But a woman who received a cash settlement from the restaurant association in response to her harassment claim rejected Cain’s denials on Friday. She said through her lawyer that she was the victim of a “series of inappropriate behaviors and unwanted advances” by Cain in 1999.

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7A04CW20111106?irpc=932

Biggest Jump Ever in Global Warming Gases – TIME

Wes Unruh — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 13:15:11 +0000

Well this is depressing:

The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.

“The more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing,” said John Reilly, co-director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2098671,00.html?xid=tweetbut

Three-time Wisconsin ‘Photographer of the Year’ arrested during Occupy rally | Poynter.

Wes Unruh — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:23:19 +0000

Photojournalist Kristyna Wentz-Graff was wearing media credentials and “was clearly not part of the protest” when city police arrested her Wednesday near the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, reports The Milwaukee Journal Sentinal. A police spokeswoman said Wentz-Graff “never identified herself as a journalist to officers.” It’s the second time in the past two months that Milwaukee police have arrested a working photojournalist.

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/romenesko/151969/three-time-wisc-photographer-of-the-year-arrested-during-occupy-rally/

#ohp Desensitization techniques for the 21st century (and beyond!)

Wes Unruh — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 02:21:08 +0000

A fictional character sent this link to me a few minutes ago.

While we are taught to stand in line, to obey and to react to stimuli routinely and predictably, we are provided with a steady stream of desensitizing media. We see people beaten on television daily. In the last decade, an ever increasing abundance of films depicted ritualistic torture, murder and human degradation such as the Saw franchise, the Hostel franchise, and the Human Centipede have emerged.

Which brings us full circle to the shit eating anecdote. Two things to take away from this story: One, be very careful about the words you choose to take literally. Two, desensitization to fear and to taboo can be something that functions to help us transcend our limitations, but can also serve to further distance us from ourselves and the Other. Like anything, it is all in the hands of those who choose to use the tool. A hammer can be used to build a house, or it can be used to beat someone’s head in.

http://www.joinmycult.org/2011/10/desensitization-techniques-for-21st.html

M.I.A, Born Free

Wes Unruh — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:53:18 +0000

Director : Romain Gavras

Director of Photography : André Chemetoff

Producer : Mourad Belkeddar

Production company : elnino.tv

Executive Production : Gaetan Rousseau / Paradoxal

via M.I.A, Born Free on Vimeo.

Quan, Shunned, Reverses Occupy Ban – The Bay Citizen

Wes Unruh — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:04:26 +0000

City finance officials now expect the costs of the eviction, cleanup and response to the protests to surpass $1 million, with at least half going to police overtime, according to sources familiar with the projections.
“Wall Street’s not going broke, but the city of Oakland will,” one finance official said. “We’re spending money on resources we definitely don’t have.”

http://www.baycitizen.org/occupy-movement/story/quan-shunned-reverses-occupy-ban/

Timothy Leary on the Wall Street Occupation Movement | Truthout

Wes Unruh — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 01:58:15 +0000

This cultural meme involves intelligence, personal access to information, an anti-ideological reliance on common sense, mental proficiency, consciousness raising, street smarts, intelligent consumerism-hedonism, personal communication skills. The meme is not new. Countercultures go back at least as far as Hermes Trismegistus, and include Socrates and Sappho, Voltaire and Thoreau, Gurdjieff and Ginsberg.

But the rapid spread of this mutational meme from 1960 to 1990 was due to the sudden mass availability of neurochemical and electronic technology. Chemicals and screens spraying electronic information into eyedrums and earballs, activating brains. Suddenly, youth all over the world are wearing jeans and listening to John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance.” The individuality meme that swept American youth during the 1960s has infected the world. The McLuhan epidemic keeps spreading.

http://www.truth-out.org/timothy-leary-wall-street-occupation-movement/1319050501

Thailand’s worst floods in half a century have reached the capital Bangkok

Wes Unruh — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:47:57 +0000

Thailand’s industrial heartland, to the north of Bangkok, has already been deluged by the surging waters, forcing the closure of more than 1,000 factories and leading to the loss of more than 600,000 jobs. Japanese carmakers, many of which have set up regional manufacturing bases in Thailand, have been badly hit as well as hard-disc drive producers, leading to a global shortage of a key component in computers.

On Monday, Mazda and Toyota, the Japanese car makers, and Toshiba, the Japanese electronics maker, become the latest in a long and growing list of major manufacturers to extend production shutdowns at facilities that have been affected by the floods.

Ms Yingluck, a political novice who became Thailand’s first woman prime minister in August, has come under increasing political pressure from critics who say her populist government has lacked co-ordination and released inaccurate information, particularly about the fate of Bangkok.

via Thai floods reach northern Bangkok – FT.com.

Small Town Hate Crime

Wes Unruh — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 04:26:16 +0000

The unidentified teen… told CNN that what happened to Anderson was no accident.

“They went out there that night looking for a black individual to beat up … they’ve done it before,” he said. “They’ve done it several times before.”

He said he had personally witnessed some of the beatings, but never took part. He says racism is behind Brandon, Mississippi’s silence about Anderson’s killing.

And he says police aren’t really concerned about Dedmon, even now as he sits in jail facing a capital murder charge.

“I’ve even heard it out of some of the police officers’ mouths,” he said. “This is their statement: ‘Well, Deryl was a good kid. He just made one bad mistake.”

via Teen murder suspect carried ‘backpack of hatred’ – CNN.com.

Genocide Definition

Wes Unruh — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 04:56:48 +0000

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. defines genocide in Article II: “..genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

a Killing members of the group;

b Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

c Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

d Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

e Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

The Genocide Convention was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948. The Convention entered into force on 12 January 1951. More than 130 nations have ratified the Genocide Convention and over 70 nations have made provisions for the punishment of genocide in domestic criminal law. The text of Article II of the Genocide Convention was included as a crime in Article 6 of the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

via Genocide Watch.

Cyberbully information

Wes Unruh — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 23:40:56 +0000

From social networking sites to online gaming (both via the computer and through a console like X-Box or PS3), to texting and chat rooms, our kids are spending more time exposed than ever before. However, it’s not as scary as it sounds, I promise, particularly if your kids avoid riskier behaviors that can leave them more vulnerable. Recognizing the risks and communicating about how they can protect themselves is the first step to keeping them safe.

http://www.netnanny.com/blog/entry/id/125

On War Veterans Readjusting to Civilian Life – via C-SPAN Video Library

Wes Unruh — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 03:10:25 +0000

General Peter Chiarelli spoke about the health and well-being of service members re-adjusting to civilian life, focusing on post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries. He said bias exists toward visible wounds versus wounds related to brain injuries. He pushed the need for more research to understand the brain. He also responded to questions from the audience.

via Peter Chiarelli Remarks – C-SPAN Video Library.

Google Engineer on Bezos

Wes Unruh — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 00:28:22 +0000

From another site…

Jeff Bezos is an infamous micro-manager. He micro-manages every single pixel of Amazon’s retail site. He hired Larry Tesler, Apple’s Chief Scientist and probably the very most famous and respected human-computer interaction expert in the entire world, and then ignored every goddamn thing Larry said for three years until Larry finally — wisely — left the company. Larry would do these big usability studies and demonstrate beyond any shred of doubt that nobody can understand that frigging website, but Bezos just couldn’t let go of those pixels, all those millions of semantics-packed pixels on the landing page. They were like millions of his own precious children. So they’re all still there, and Larry is not.

http://siliconfilter.com/google-engineer-google-is-a-prime-example-of-our-complete-failure-to-understand-platforms/

New project on horizon for Ex- #Motograter bandmembers! #metal

Wes Unruh — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:46:02 +0000

I am a professional hard rock vocalist (proof here). My band members and I have toured the country successfully for the past three years and were on the verge of a very big break when unfortunately we had to leave our current band MOTOGRATER due to life style differences. The new band we have has a lot of support but unfortunately no financial backing. A good friend of ours told us about the site so here we go trying to make our dreams come true. The talent in this band is so amazing and the guys are all very humble and friendly as you will find out.

via This band is amazing! Now let’s get them ready to tour! by Michael Angel Woodruff — Kickstarter.

Big Ben about to break off? #ohp

Wes Unruh — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 01:04:41 +0000

For the record, clearly predicted by Steve Jackson.

Experts say the neogothic clock tower – one of the world’s most recognizable landmarks – is gently leaning to one side. Documents recently published by Britain’s Parliament show that the top of its gilded spire is nearly 18 inches (nearly half a meter) out of line.

The 315-foot (96-meter) tower is leaning in the northwest direction at an angle of 0.26 degrees, according to a report from 2009 that was recently obtained by the Sunday Telegraph through a Freedom of Information request.

via News from The Associated Press.

BlackBerry services collapse – Telegraph

Wes Unruh — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 18:17:21 +0000

All are served by a RIM data centre in Slough.They have been unable to browse the web or instant messages, or access other internet services such as email.A RIM spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

via BlackBerry services collapse – Telegraph.

Steve Jobs and LSD

Wes Unruh — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 15:07:32 +0000

Commentary on this issue from metafilter user nickrussell at 5:53 AM on October 9 :

Gates — who probably did not consume LSD — saw the ability to put a computer on every desk. Much as there was a typewriter on many desks or a telephone. Iterative thinking, we have one box on the desk now. Let’s put another box on the desk. Iterative thinking. For Jobs, it was a greater realisation than that. You don’t need the desk at all. Computing is actually an extension of thinking. That sounds very much like Hofman or the others who delve into the fundamental constructs behind reality.

via (1) Applesource? | MetaFilter.

David Koch Flees from ABC News Over Iran Scandal Questions | Video Cafe

Wes Unruh — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 17:55:07 +0000

ABC News caught David Koch leaving his Park Avenue apartment this week, but the tea party billionaire quickly fled to his car, avoiding questions about a scandal involving his company’s trade with Iran.
A recent report in Bloomberg Markets magazine revealed that Koch Industries had been caught paying bribes to win contracts, engaging in possibly-illegal trade with Iran, price fixing, and ignoring environmental regulations.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/david-koch-flees-abc-news-over-iran-scandal-

The Mythology of Business

Wes Unruh — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 15:51:59 +0000

There is no ensuring that mythological images, and the powerful psychological forces that they represent, aren’t being used by corporations towards short-sightedly greedy ends, not to mention a benefit for the “self” of the corporation to the detriment of all others. When there is no mechanism for establishing human needs and rights as paramount to corporate or industrial myths, this is an increasingly dire concern. As organizations invariably try to present themselves in the most positive light it is impossible to get a read of their actual values from an intentionally fabricated myth.

This myth of benevolence presents itself on a National level as well. American culture in particular has a need to present itself as a benevolent superpower, leading the rest of the world into an Enlightened era of growth and commerce. This is not unlike Britain’s Empire, upon which the sun never set. In both cases the hubris exhibited was not merely of capacity, but more importantly, more catastrophically, it represents the rigid and wholesale self-congratulation of a myth that has so overshadowed reality that the two share nothing in common.

via The Mythology of Business part 2 | Modern Mythology.

Important Organizations

Wes Unruh — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 06:29:02 +0000

A Thousand Voices Journal Our goal is to open the hearts of young people to the beauty of living in a diverse world, and to the benefits of peaceful conflict resolution.
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Wherever JDC works, it is viewed as a trusted partner to propel vulnerable Jewish and non-Jewish communities from dependency to self-sustainability.
Amnesty International a global movement of more than 3 million supporters, members and activists in more than 150 countries and territories who campaign to end grave abuses of human rights.
APA: Hate Crimes Commentary on Hate Crimes by way of a scientific and professional organization that represents psychology in the United States.
Armenian National Committee of America the largest and most influential Armenian American grassroots political organization.
Art Works Projects mission is to use design and the arts to raise awareness of and educate the public about significant human rights and environmental issues.
Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation dedicated to building a worldwide community of policymakers with the tools and the commitment to address conflict before it turns into genocide.
Baby Scoop Era Research Initiative to research and educate society and state and federal government about improper and unethical American domestic adoption practices between the years of 1945 – 1972.
Bastards.org advocates for the civil and human rights of adult citizens who were adopted as children.
Bede House.org.uk a focus for individual and community development in the area and to contribute to the pattern of social care in Southwark.
Beyond Differences to raise awareness of and start a national conversation about the issue of social isolation in middle school.
Box Turtle Bulletin News, analysis and fact-checking of anti-gay rhetoric.
Brain Injury Association of America the United States’ oldest and largest nationwide brain injury advocacy organization.
Bully Outreach Project will ultimately use a decorated motorhome to display sponsorship and provide education about bullying issues to 300 student groups across Canada.
Bully Research Network to promote and assist international collaboration among bullying and peer victimization researchers.
Bully Suicide Project spreading hope to those students effected by bullying in their schools.
BullyBust includes research-based resources for students, parents, and educators for addressing bullying incidences effectively inside and out of school.
Bullying.org to provide educational programs and resources to individuals, families, educational institutions and organizations.
BullyingUK decades of experience in helping parents deal with the changes that are a constant part of family life.
C-Span.org a private, non-profit company, created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a public service to provide public access to the political process.
Canadian Center for International Justice a charitable organization that works with survivors of genocide, torture and other atrocities to seek redress and bring perpetrators to justice.
Center for American Progress dedicated to improving the lives of Americans through progressive ideas and action.
Center for Economic and Policy Research was established in 1999 to promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people’s lives.
Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies university teaching and scholarly research in Holocaust and genocide studies.
Center for Social Inclusion.org develops tools, strategies and leadership for dismantling what we call structural racism, the many unintentional ways in which race-neutral decisions about how to allocate resources and opportunities exclude communities of color and weaken our society a
Chain Reaction.org a community of people, passionate about social change, who are saying ‘we can make a difference’.
Change Nation to increase the profile of policy issues that matter to low-income people and people of color, as well as to educate and empower low-income people and people of color to act on those issues.
Child Trends DataBank nonpartisan research organization dedicated to improving the lives of children and families by providing research and data to inform decision-making that affects children.
City Critters.org works in conjunction with other groups to place stray and abandoned cats, as well as to reduce euthansia at the municipal shelter system by accepting their animals for placement through our network.
CiviliNation to foster an online culture where every person can freely participate in a democratic, open, rational and truth-based exchange of ideas and information, without fear or threat of being the target of unwarranted abuse, harassment or lies.
Coalition of Black Trade Unionists the fiercely independent voice of black workers within the trade union movement, challenging organized labor to be more relevant to the needs and aspirations of Black and poor workers.
Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning works to advance the science and evidence-based practice of social and emotional learning.
Committee to Protect Journalists defending the rights of journalists to report the news without fear of reprisal.
Consortium To Prevent School Violence advocacy that promotes effective implementation of positive school violence prevention practices, and fostering technical assistance, information dissemination, and professional development based on high-quality scientific research.
ConstableCare.org.au aims to effectively communicate key life skills, citizenship and safety messages for children aged two to twelve through puppet theatre and interactive drama.
Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans.org an association of liberal religious congregations, each autonomous and self-governing.
CyberSmart! Curriculum ready-to-use instruction helps you guide students to make safe, smart, and ethical decisions in the digital world where they live, study and play.
Darfur and Beyond.org bringing people and organizations together to promote advocacy and build political will to end genocide and mass atrocities throughout the world.
Darfur Fast for Life A positive vision of a world in which the human rights of ALL humans is respected is what motivates this group to stand today and tomorrow with the people of Darfur.
Daughters Rising.org a nonprofit organization that works to prevent sex trafficking by empowering at-risk girls through education training programs and scholarships.
DefineTheLine.ca to share our expertise with policy-makers, teachers, parents, educators and youth (11 – 17) in user-friendly ways that help all stakeholders engage, learn from, and share resources on our website.
Democracy Now! funded entirely through contributions from listeners, viewers, and foundations.
Denver Band Relief group of Denver bands who perform to raise money for charity relief in Colorado.
Dialogue Institute provides resources and creates networks of support among all those engaged in interreligious dialogue and action around the world.
DigiActive.org dedicated to helping grassroots activists around the world use the Internet and mobile phones to increase their impact.
East Coast Asian American Student Union To inspire, educate, and empower those interested in Asian American & Pacific Islander American issues.
Education Equality Project.org exists in order to transform the power and resources of our wide coalition of supporters into an education reform movement that demands immediate real change and promotes the most effective strategies for advancing student achievement.
Empire State Pride Agenda New York’s statewide lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights and advocacy organization.
Enough is Enough parents, educators and other caring adults make the key difference in the battle to protect children from online threats.
Enough Project.org a project of the Center for American Progress, helping to build a permanent constituency to prevent genocide and crimes against humanity.
Equality Michigan works to achieve full equality and respect for all people in Michigan regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression.
Equipping, Restoring, Multiplyingassisting local churches to support and enable widows and orphans.
European Roma Rights Centre to provide Roma with the tools necessary to combat discrimination and achieve equal access to justice, education, housing, health care and public services.
Facing History.org combats racism, antisemitism, and religious bigotry by using history to teach tolerance in classrooms around the globe.
FIERCE dedicated to cultivating the next generation of social justice movement leaders who are dedicated to ending all forms of oppression.
Florida Holocaust Museum home to the permanent exhibition: History, Heritage and Hope, which uses original artifacts, historical photographs and documents to tell the story of the Holocaust with a special emphasis on the personal stories of local survivors.
Ford Foundation an independent, global organization with a legacy of commitment to innovative leaders on the frontlines of social change.
Foundation for the International Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities international promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms with special emphasis on the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities with a view to spread the culture of prevention
Freedom to Marry.org leading the campaign to overturn DOMA and is working across the country to win marriage in more states and educate the public about why marriage matters to same-sex couples and their families.
Friends Committee on National Legislation multi-issue advocacy connects historic Quaker testimonies on peace, equality, simplicity, and truth with peace and social justice issues which the United States government is or should be addressing.
Funding Exchange.org a national membership organization of regionally based social justice foundations.
Games Learning Society.org a collection of academic researchers, interactive media (or game) developers, and government and industry leaders who investigate how this medium operates, how it can be used to transform how we learn, and what this means for society.
Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation amplifies the voice of the LGBT community by empowering real people to share their stories, holding the media accountable for the words and images they present, and helping grassroots organizations communicate effectively.
Gay Center.org the largest LGBT multi-service organization on the East Coast and second largest LGBT community center in the world.
Genocide Education Project a nonprofit organization that assists educators in teaching about human rights and genocide, particularly the Armenian Genocide, by developing and distributing instructional materials, providing access to teaching resources and organizing educational work
Genocide Intervention Network the largest activist organization in America dedicated to preventing and ending genocide and mass atrocities worldwide.
Genocide Prevention Now.org intended to become the most comprehensive information source about genocide in the world.
Genocide Watch.org exists to predict, prevent, stop, and punish genocide and other forms of mass murder. We seek to raise awareness and influence public policy concerning potential and actual genocide.
Gone The Blue Riders triumph of the human spirit and survival against all odds.
Helen Bamber.org a UK-based human rights organisation, formed in April 2005 to help rebuild lives and inspire a new self-esteem in survivors of gross human rights violations.
Holocaust Museum Houston dedicated to educating people about the Holocaust, remembering the 6 million Jews and other innocent victims and honoring the survivors’ legacy.
How Was Your Day.ca increase community awareness, provide alternative solutions to violence, create interventions that address multiple risk factors, identify gaps in services, strengthen the cross-sectoral response to bullying, and provide professional development training.
Human Rights Campaign advocates on behalf of LGBT Americans, mobilizes grassroots actions in diverse communities, invests strategically to elect fair-minded individuals to office and educates the public about LGBT issues.
Human Rights Law Foundation dedicated to protecting the moral rights of all people to be free from torture and persecution.
Human Rights Watch to prevent discrimination, to uphold political freedom, to protect people from inhumane conduct in wartime, and to bring offenders to justice.
Idealist connects people, organizations, and resources to help build a world where all people can live free and dignified lives.
Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Holocaust by honoring the memories of those who were lost and by teaching universal lessons that combat hatred, prejudice and indifference.
Independent Sector nonpartisan coalition of approximately 600 organizations leads, strengthens, and mobilizes the charitable community in order to fulfill our vision of a just and inclusive society and a healthy democracy of active citizens, effective institutions, and vib
Instituut voor Oorlogs-, Genocide- en Holocauststudies center for the study and dissemination of knowledge of the history of the Netherlands (including the Dutch East Indies) during the Second World War.
Inter Pares.ca we support people’s struggles for peace, justice, and equality; their efforts to challenge structural obstacles for change; and their alternative development approaches.
International Court of Justice the principal judicial organ of the United Nations (UN). It was established in June 1945 by the Charter of the United Nations and began work in April 1946.
ITHAKA providing the content, tools, and services needed to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways.
Jewish Alliance for Change founded to promote Jewish engagement in the political process in pursuit of the common good.
Jewish Federation of Greater Rochesteran “umbrella” for the over 25,000 people who live in Jewish households in the Greater Rochester area.
Jewish World Watch bears witness to first-hand accounts in conflict regions, partners with on-the-ground organizations to develop high-impact projects that improve the lives of survivors and help build the foundation for a safer world, and inspires our communities to suppor
JSTOR connects libraries, researchers, teachers, and students around the world with vital scholarly content in more than 50 disciplines.
Kansas City Anti-Violence Project committed to providing domestic violence, sexual assault, and hate crimes advocacy and education to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community.
Karibu Foundation To provide direct assistance to the poorest, especially children, in Rwanda.
Kenneth Burke Society to promote the study, understanding, dissemination of, research on, critical analysis of, and preservation of the works of and about Kenneth Burke.
Khmer Health Advocates.org founded with a mission to care for the health needs of survivors of the Mahandorai (the Cambodian holocaust), and their families.
LAMBDA to assist GLBT people affected by violence, inequality, and other critical issues.
Lambda Legal.org a national organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and those with HIV through impact litigation, education and public policy work.
Make It Better Project.org to give youth and adults the concrete tools they need to make schools safer for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students right now.
MAP International a global Christian health organization that partners with people living in conditions of poverty to save lives and develop healthier families and communities.
Media Alliance.org actively supports media workers in organizing for better working conditions, freedom from government harassment, and increased resources for rigorous, investigative, community-based reporting.
Media Matters For America progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.
Minnesota Nonprofits nonprofits join together across interest areas to work on issues of common concern to all.
Mitchell Museum of the American Indian one of the few museums in the United States focused exclusively on the history, culture and arts of the Native people of the United States and Canada.
Museum of Contemporary Religious Art dedicated to the ongoing dialogue between contemporary artists and the world’s faith traditions, and to serving as a forum for interfaith understanding.
NAACP Brooklyn Branch to ensure the political, educational, social and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.
National Action Network to promote a modern civil rights agenda that includes the fight for social justice, education, and one standard of justice and decency for all people regardless of race, religion, national origin, and gender.
National Alliance on Mental Illness focused on educating America about mental illness, offering resources to those in need, and insisting that mental illness become a high national priority.
National Bullying Prevention Center a movement, a cause, a place where you and teens everywhere can take powerful action against bullying.
NYC Pride.org wholly volunteer-managed non-partisan, tax-exempt, not-for-profit corporation that organizes Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Pride events in New York City to commemorate and celebrate the Stonewall riots.
Olweus Bullying Prevention Program a school-wide, systems change program that is effective at reducing rates of bullying in a school if implemented with fidelity.
One Hundred Days.org non-profit founded by a group of friends and neighbors in Atlanta, GA who were compelled by Christ to play a role in the restoration of Rwanda.
Open Society Foundations seek to shape public policies that assure greater fairness in political, legal, and economic systems and safeguard fundamental rights.
Operation Broken Silence.org a collection of abolitionists who are speaking and acting against the growing threats of mass atrocities and modern slavery in our world today.
Ostracism Awareness Information about ostracism, resources for recovery, support, and encouragement
Oxfam America an international relief and development organization that creates lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and injustice.
PBS.org America’s largest classroom, the nation’s largest stage for the arts and a trusted window to the world.
Peace and Justice Initiative.org to encourage the national adoption of laws under which crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes can be prosecuted.
People For the American Way dedicated to making the promise of America real for every American: Equality. Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. The right to seek justice in a court of law. The right to cast a vote that counts.
PFLAG.org Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) is a national non-profit organization with over 200,000 members and supporters and over 350 affiliates in the United States.
Pound Pup Legacy to promote the safety and well being of children in care. To this end we document cases of malpractice and corruption and offer support to the victims of the dark side of child placement.
Prevent 7.org a non-profit organization that focuses on the prevention and awareness of bullying, hazing and suicide.
Prevent Hate.org to address the needs of diversified communities with strategies that elevate their ability to create equality among stakeholders and limit motives for conflict.
PREVNet to translate and exchange knowledge about bullying to enhance awareness, to provide assessment and intervention tools, and to promote policy related to the problems of bullying.
Project Patient Care.org an independent Chicago-based nonprofit organization working to prevent medical errors and continuously improve patient safety and healthcare quality.
PrYSM youth organization which challenges and supports Southeast Asian youth to become leaders, organizers, and critical thinkers, by offering educational workshops, leadership opportunities, mentorship, and oversight of youth-led community organizing projects.
Raccoon, Inc to find ways of fostering reconciliation, with the ultimate goal of building a civil society.
RAND Corporation anticipating emerging issues; establishing new angles of inquiry; and mapping the territory for responses by government, business, and society.
René Cassin a human rights NGO that uses the experience of the Jewish people, and positive Jewish values, to campaign and educate on universal human rights issues such as discrimination, detention, and genocide.
Rubin Museum of Art a nonprofit cultural and educational institution established to present, preserve, and document a permanent collection that reflects the vitality, complexity, and historical significance of Himalayan art and to create exhibitions and programs designed to
Rwanda Consulting responding to a call from many teachers and students who expressed interest in teaching and learning about the 1994 Genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda to Middle and High School students.
SafetyLit the online source for current and past scholarly research about all aspects of injury prevention and safety promotion.
SAGE USA.org has pioneered programs and services for the aging LGBT community, provided technical assistance and training to expand opportunities for LGBT older people across the country, and provided a national voice on LGBT aging issues.
Save Darfur.org inspiring action, raising awareness and speaking truth to power on behalf of the people of Darfur.
Say NO – UNiTE to End Violence against Women a social mobilization platform on ending violence against women and girls, contributing towards UN Secretary General’s system-wide campaign.
School Shooting.org an information resource on school shooting incidents taking place in the U.S. since 1992.
Scientific Journals Internationalpublishes peer-reviewed open-access journals for all major disciplines.
Sentinel Project volunteers working on identifying communities vulnerable to genocide and developing creative ways to counter specific threats.
Shelley and Don Rubin Foundation searching for strategic ways to support the arts, to meet urgent human needs, to defend liberty and to promote social justice.
Simon Wiesenthal Center a global Jewish human rights organization that confronts anti-Semitism, hate and terrorism, promotes human rights and dignity, stands with Israel, defends the safety of Jews worldwide, and teaches the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations.
Somaly Mam Foundation a nonprofit charity committed to ending modern day slavery in North America and around the world.
South African Holocaust and Genocide Foundation provides the educational and philosophical direction for the three Holocaust Centres in South Africa and is dedicated to providing support for the national curriculum through the development of classroom support materials and the facilitation of national
Southern Poverty Law Center a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society.
STAND Canada.org the leading organization in Canada for youth led anti-genocide advocacy and activism.
Stand Now.org student-led division of the United to End Genocide, envisions a world in which the international community protects civilians from genocidal violence.
Stichting Sophia an European foundation for the advancement of doing philosophy with children.
StopBullying an official U.S. Government Web site managed by the Department of Health & Human Services in partnership with the Department of Education and Department of Justice.
Stories of Us established for the production and distribution of the Promoting Positive Peer Relationships (P3R): Stories of Us – Bullying resources,
Suicide.org find help, hope, comfort, understanding, support, love, and extensive resources here.
Survival International.org the only organization working for tribal peoples’ rights worldwide.
Taproot Foundation a nonprofit organization that makes business talent available to organizations working to improve society.
Target Bullying to reduce bullying behaviors we must examine bullying and victimization from multiple perspectives.
Teaching Tolerance thought-provoking news, conversation and support for those who care about diversity, equal opportunity and respect for differences in schools.
TeachSafeSchools.org to help school personnel develop a supportive, safe and inviting learning environment where students can thrive and be successful.
TeamHeroes.ca a Canadian game about bullies and what to do if you or someone you know is being bullied.
The Earth Charter Initiative to promote the transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework that includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic just
The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity to combat indifference, intolerance and injustice through international dialogue and youth-focused programs that promote acceptance, understanding and equality.
The Equal Rights Trust an independent international organisation whose purpose is to combat discrimination and promote equality as a fundamental human right and a basic principle of social justice.
The Harry Potter Alliance an outside-of-the-box approach to civic engagement by using parallels from the Harry Potter books to educate and mobilize young people across the world toward issues of literacy, equality, and human rights.
The National Press Club a social and business organization dedicated to supporting the ongoing improvement of the profession of journalism.
The Theosophical Society founded in 1875 in an effort to promote the expressed awareness of the Oneness of Life.
The Trevor Project national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth.
Tides Foundation a values-based, social change platform that leverages individual and institutional leadership and investment to positively impact local and global communities.
Transparency.org brings people together in a powerful worldwide coalition to end the devastating impact of corruption on men, women and children around the world.
TRIAL (TRack Impunity ALways) put the law at the service of the victims of international crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture and forced disappearances).
Truth Wins Out a non-profit organization that fights anti-gay religious extremism.
Turn It Down youth, bands, parents, teachers, and friends in the record industry speaking out, standing up, and turning down the sounds of hate.
UK Kindness Movement a debating forum on empathy as well as a force for social progress using kindness campaigns.
UN Refugee Agency mandated to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide. Its primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees.
United Religions Initiative a supported network connecting people across religions and cultures in the service of peace and justice.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum A living memorial to the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires citizens and leaders worldwide to confront hatred, promote human dignity, and prevent genocide.
Victims of Hate Speech Child Trends is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to improving the lives of children and families by providing research and data to inform decision-making that affects children.
Violence Policy Center works to stop this annual toll of death and injury through research, advocacy, education, and collaboration.
Virginia Anti-Violence Project works to address and end violence, with a specific focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer communities across Virginia.
WAR Child.ca to empower children and young people to flourish within their communities and overcome the challenges of living with, and recovering from, conflict.
Washington Cease Fire.org one of the most respected gun safety organizations in the nation and continues to work to reduce gun violence in communities throughout Washington state.
Water for Sudan mission is simple: drill borehole wells which bring safe drinking water to the people in South Sudan’s remote villages, transforming lives in the process.
We Stop Hate.org Only when we see a rise in self-esteem, will we see a decline in bullying. This is because people who are happy with themselves won’t put others down… and that creates a better world for us all.
Yad Vashem Established in 1953, as the world center for documentation, research, education and commemoration of the Holocaust.
Yes Institute provides education that gets at the source of why youth are harassed through powerful communication and education with people in all segments of the community.

Ohio: Castoffs are attacking fellow Amish

Wes Unruh — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 04:05:11 +0000

Men and sometimes women from a group of Jefferson County families disavowed by mainstream Amish have terrorized a half-dozen or more fellow Amish, cutting the beards off men and the hair off men and women, the sheriff said. The attacks occurred over the past three weeks in Carroll, Holmes, Jefferson and Trumbull counties, which form the heart of Ohio’s Amish population, one of the nation’s largest.
Abdalla said the motive may be related to unspecified religious differences involving 18 Amish families, 17 of them related, that have drawn previous attention from law enforcement, including a threat against the sheriff and a relative convicted of sexual contact with a minor.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_AMISH_ATTACKS?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

The Greatest Speech Ever Made – YouTube

Wes Unruh — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:10:42 +0000

One of the most important speeches in recorded history was given by a comedian by the name of Charlie Chaplin.

via The Greatest Speech Ever Made – YouTube.

Bleeding Kansas and the Missouri Border Wa

Wes Unruh — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 15:10:51 +0000

The “war” between Kansas and Missouri began almost immediately when Kansas was opened for settlement in 1854, seven years before the Civil War officially began. No doubt, both sides were ugly — it was a “war” between people that had strong opposing sentiments and lifestyles at stake

via Bleeding Kansas and the Missouri Border War – Page 1.

Sketch of an argument re: Traditionalism and feminism | cigfran

Wes Unruh — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 00:45:43 +0000

International development teaches that one of the best ways to quickly improve a country’s conditions is to educate its women.

Education of this kind is often non-traditional, and moves women out of traditional social roles.

via Sketch of an argument re: Traditionalism and feminism | cigfran.

Koch Industries: #EnronMoment? // via Politicalgates, Bloomberg

Wes Unruh — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 03:19:55 +0000

The story is a fine piece of investigative reporting and spans over 14 pages in the magazine, without the adverts. No less than 15 Bloomberg-journalists in several countries have worked on it. It is fascinating to see that such a major investigative piece about a highly political issue does appear in a business magazine and not in one of the more “traditional” political magazines or newspapers.

This is Pulitzer-Prize territory. This article is destined to make large waves, not just because of the particular revelations, but also because of the highly impressive and almost surprising depth of reporting. It is obvious that no expense was spared for this article. Next to Jane Mayer’s ground breaking piece about the Koch Brothers in the New Yorker, this article by Bloomberg Markets Magazine undoubtedly represents another PR-disaster for the Koch Brothers, and could also have severe consequences.

via In new bombshell story, “Bloomberg Markets” reveals that Koch Industries sold petrochemical equipment to Iran and paid bribes in six countries ~ Politicalgates.

As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge Around Globe – NYTimes.com

Wes Unruh — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 04:25:41 +0000

But from South Asia to the heartland of Europe and now even to Wall Street, these protesters share something else: wariness, even contempt, toward traditional politicians and the democratic political process they preside over.

They are taking to the streets, in part, because they have little faith in the ballot box.

“Our parents are grateful because they’re voting,” said Marta Solanas, 27, referring to older Spaniards’ decades spent under the Franco dictatorship. “We’re the first generation to say that voting is worthless.”

via As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge Around Globe – NYTimes.com.

NYT: Teller-A.T.M. Hybrid Takes Ban

Wes Unruh — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:37:50 +0000

Economists and policy makers say mobile agents like Ms. Yashwant – who also are employed in countries like Brazil, Mexico and Kenya – represent one of the most promising ways to help the rural poor save and protect their money. Many people in India who do not have bank accounts, for instance, buy gold necklaces or simply keep cash in their unlocked homes.
“This is something that could be powerful,” said Abhijit V. Banerjee, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who wrote “Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty” with Esther Duflo.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/business/global/teller-atm-hybrid-takes-banking-to-rural-india.xml

IT’S WORKING

Wes Unruh — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 03:19:34 +0000

Irv Rosenfeld, a financial adviser in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., has been in the program since November 1982. His condition produces painful bone tumors, but he said marijuana has replaced prescription painkillers.
Rosenfeld likes to tell this story: In the mid-1980s, the federal government asked his doctor for an update on how Rosenfeld was doing. It was an update the doctor didn’t believe the government was truly interested in. He had earlier tried to get a copy of the previous update, and was told the government couldn’t find it, Rosenfeld said.
So instead of filling out the form, the doctor responded with a simple sentence written in large, red letters: “It’s working.”

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_UNCLE_SAM_POT?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Al-Qaida calls on Ahmadinejad to end #911truth conspiracy theories

Wes Unruh — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 23:06:01 +0000

Al-Qaida has sent a message to the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asking him to stop spreading conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks.

Iranian media on Wednesday reported quotes from what appears to be an article published in the latest issue of the al-Qaida English language magazine, Inspire, which described Ahmadinejad’s remarks over the 11 September attacks as “ridiculous”.

via Al-Qaida calls on Ahmadinejad to end 9/11 conspiracy theories | World news | guardian.co.uk.

‘Coerced’ voting is legal, but wrong

Wes Unruh — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 19:54:33 +0000

However, as the day went on, one figure kept appearing with absentee ballots. He seemed to smirk like Lewis Carroll’s Chesire Cat as he walked by me toward the ballot box where he literally stuffed them in. He repeated this throughout the day. Each time he arrived, he carried armloads of ballots, sometimes so many that some even slipped from his hands requiring him to retrieve them from the floor.
That day, I lost more than the election. I lost my trust and faith in the integrity of our voting system. The man I watched stuffing armfuls of absentee ballots into the ballot box was Charlie Webster, who leads the Maine Republican Party and is fighting to keep a new law introduced by his political party that suppresses Mainers’ rights to vote by eliminating same-day voter registration.

http://bangordailynews.com/2011/09/25/opinion/contributors/%E2%80%98coerced%E2%80%99-voting-is-legal-but-wrong/?ref=mostReadBox

Made of Ma’at

Wes Unruh — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 19:22:24 +0000

Made of Ma\'at Related posts: The Greatest Speech Ever Made – YouTube How I Made My Millions by @agent139 Man-made calamity the world is ignoring Related posts:

How the SEC covers up Wall Street crime

Wes Unruh — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:36:09 +0000

Under a deal the SEC worked out with the National Archives and Records Administration, all of the agencys records – “including case files relating to preliminary investigations” – are supposed to be maintained for at least 25 years. But the SEC, using history-altering practices that for once actually deserve the overused and usually hysterical term “Orwellian,” devised an elaborate and possibly illegal system under which staffers were directed to dispose of the documents from any preliminary inquiry that did not receive approval from senior staff to become a full-blown, formal investigation. Amazingly, the wholesale destruction of the cases – known as MUIs, or “Matters Under Inquiry” – was not something done on the sly, in secret. The enforcement division of the SEC even spelled out the procedure in writing, on the commissions internal website. “After you have closed a MUI that has not become an investigation,” the site advised staffers, “you should dispose of any documents obtained in connection with the MUI.”

Many of the destroyed files involved companies and individuals who would later play prominent roles in the economic meltdown of 2008. Two MUIs involving con artist Bernie Madoff vanished. So did a 2002 inquiry into financial fraud at Lehman Brothers, as well as a 2005 case of insider trading at the same soon-to-be-bankrupt bank. A 2009 preliminary investigation of insider trading by Goldman Sachs was deleted, along with records for at least three cases involving the infamous hedge fund SAC Capital.

The widespread destruction of records was brought to the attention of Congress in July, when an SEC attorney named Darcy Flynn decided to blow the whistle. According to Flynn, who was responsible for helping to manage the commissions records, the SEC has been destroying records of preliminary investigations since at least 1993. After he alerted NARA to the problem, Flynn reports, senior staff at the SEC scrambled to hide the commissions improprieties.

via Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes? | Politics News | Rolling Stone.

Wall Street protesters rights violated by NYC police during ‘inequality’ march

Wes Unruh — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 19:31:54 +0000

“I was shocked because it seemed like one person after another was being brutally tackled, and it wasn’t clear why,” said Meaghan Linick, 23, from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, who attended the rally. “I was deeply disturbed to see them throw a man [down] and immediately they were pounding on him. Their arms were going back in the air. I couldn’t believe how violent five people needed to be against one unarmed man.”
The protesters, joined together under the banner of an organization called Occupy Wall Street, have been stationed in Zuccotti Park since last weekend, attempting to draw attention to what they believe is a dysfunctional economic system that unfairly benefits corporations and the mega-rich.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/09/24/2011-09-24_nasty_wall_streetfight_protesters_cuffed_peppersprayed_during_inequality_march.html

Custom centaur skeleton – Boing Boing

Wes Unruh — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 17:54:42 +0000

the torso of a real human skeleton and melding it with the body of a horse

via Custom centaur skeleton – Boing Boing.

Carl Jung – Allegory of the Sorcerer’s Cave

Wes Unruh — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:22:48 +0000

Carl Jung – Allegory of the Sorcerer’s Cave.

There was once a queer old man who lived in a cave, where he had sought refuge from the noise of the villages. He was reputed to be a sorcerer, and therefore he had disciples who hoped to learn the art of sorcery from him. But he himself was not thinking of any such thing. He was only seeking to know what it was that he did not know, but which, he felt certain, was always happening. After meditating for a very long time on that which is beyond meditation, he saw no other way of escape from his predicament than to take a piece of red chalk and draw all kinds of diagrams on the walls of his cave, in order to find out what that which he did not know might look like. After many attempts he hit on the circle. ‘That’s right,’ he felt, ‘and now for a quadrangle inside it!’–which made it better still. His disciples were curious; but all they could make out was that the old man was up to something, and they would have given anything to know what he was doing. But when they asked him: ‘What are you doing there?’ he made no reply. Then they discovered the diagrams on the wall and said: ‘That’s it!’–and they all imitated the diagrams. But in so doing they turned the whole process upside down, without noticing it: they anticipated the result in the hope of making the process repeat itself which had led to that result. This is how it happened then and how it still happens today.

- Carl G. Jung

Google Confirms It Aims to Own Your Online ID – #nymwars

Wes Unruh — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:20:49 +0000

It was the former Google CEO’s remarks about the rationale for this policy that were most interesting: He didn’t just say—as Vic Gundotra, the Google executive in charge of the new social network has—that having real names maintains a certain tone of behavior that is preferable to anonymous forums (an argument that online-community pioneer Derek Powazek has also made). According to Carvin, Schmidt said the reason Google needs users with real names is that the company sees Google+ as the core of an identity platform it is building that can be used for other things:

He (Eric) replied by saying that G+ was built primarily as an identity service, so fundamentally it depends on people using their real names if they’re going to build future products that leverage that information.

As Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson noted in a blog post in response to Schmidt’s comments, this is an admission by the company that it wants to be an identity gatekeeper. Others have made similar observations since the launch of Google+.

via Google Confirms It Aims to Own Your Online ID – BusinessWeek.

The Surreal Ruins of Qaddafi’s Never-Never Land – NYTimes.com

Wes Unruh — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 16:55:57 +0000

In a sense, the battle for Tripoli began long ago in Qaddafi’s mind and was foreshadowed in the elaborate layers of defense he built up between himself and ordinary Libyans. These were not just physical — the city within a city that was Bab al Aziziya and the underground tunnels that may have allowed him to escape — but virtual. He built an extraordinary network of surveillance and control, hiring French, Chinese and South African companies to help monitor the phones and Internet and employing a vast network of informants and contract killers who could track his domestic opponents and critics to the ends of the earth. After the rebellion broke out in February, that network flared up in a last, furious effort to monitor and neutralize the discontent.

via The Surreal Ruins of Qaddafi’s Never-Never Land – NYTimes.com.

Miami University could host controversial Westboro Baptist Church – Greater Cincinnati Area

Wes Unruh — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:02:03 +0000

Jon Yarborough a member of the LGBTQ student group Spectrum says he too is against Westboro’s beliefs, but can understand the potential for a learning experience.

“I feel like as long as they’re coming and being represented as a hate group, and are understood as that, then maybe they can have some sort of education value to the student here,” Yarborough said.

The U.S. Supreme court ruled in March that the church can picket on the grounds of first amendment rights — picketing isn’t expected when the group plans to speak on campus with faculty and select students.

via Miami University could host controversial Westboro Baptist Churc – FOX19 News and Weather – Greater Cincinnati Area.

The Dark Side of the Placebo Effect: When Intense Belief Kills

Wes Unruh — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 04:24:30 +0000

When the Laotian communists won, many Hmong struck out for America to avoid reprisals. The U.S. government decided to scatter the Hmong randomly across the U.S. to 53 different cities, breaking up the immigration patterns we generally see. In short order, the Hmong organized and made a “secondary migration” to California, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The immigrants ran into all kinds of problems making their way in the States. Highland Laos, where farming and hunting were the norm, was not Minneapolis-St. Paul or Fresno. Unemployment was obscenely high and the sense of community that many had enjoyed in the old country was gone.

Some Hmong felt that they had not properly honored the memories of their ancestors, which was a known risk factor among the Hmong for being visited by the tsog tsuam. Once the night-mare visitations began, a shaman was often needed to set things right. And in the scattered communities of Hmong across the country, they might not have access to the right person. Without access to traditional rituals, shamans, and geographies, the Hmong were unable to provide themselves psychic protection from the spirits of their sleep.

via The Dark Side of the Placebo Effect: When Intense Belief Kills – Alexis Madrigal – Life – The Atlantic.

Carl Jung | MetaFilter

Wes Unruh — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 14:30:02 +0000

Carl Jung: Taking inner life seriously. An eight-part series on the thought of Carl Gustav Jung from the Guardian’s How to Believe series (previously.) Jung’s relationship with his patient, student, and rumored lover Sabina Spielrein, and his mentor Sigmund Freud is the subject of a new film, “A Dangerous Method.”

http://www.metafilter.com/107520/Carl-Jung

Michele Bachmann says #Perrycare

Wes Unruh — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 04:24:49 +0000

Bachmann also sought to tie Perry’s effort, which was ultimately blocked by the Texas Legislature, to Obama’s healthcare law in a Web video and fundraising appeal to supporters in which she dubs his efforts as “Perrycare,” a riff on the “Obamacare” label that some use to describe the president’s healthcare reform package.

“Whether it’s Obamacare or Perrycare, I oppose any governor or president who mandates a family’s healthcare choices,” Bachmann says in the video. “Especially if the decision-making process occurs behind closed doors, bypassing legislative action, and favors campaign contributors over families.”

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-bachmann-costa-mesa-20110916,0,2745676.story

Bush admin pushed #Solyndra loan guarantee for two years | Grist

Wes Unruh — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 17:59:12 +0000

February 2006 – October 2006: In February, Solyndra raises its first round of venture financing, worth $10.6 million from CMEA Capital, Redpoint Ventures, and U.S. Venture Partners. In October, Argonaut Venture Capital, an investment arm of George Kaiser, invests $17 million into Solyndra. Madrone Capital Partners, an investment arm of the Walton family, invests $7 million. Those investments are part of a $78.2 million fund.

December 2006: Solyndra applies for a loan guarantee under the 1703 program.

Late 2007: Loan guarantee program is funded. Solyndra was one of 16 clean-tech companies deemed ready to move forward in the due diligence process. The Bush administration DOE moves forward to develop a conditional commitment.

October 2008: Then Solyndra CEO Chris Gronet touted reasons for building in Silicon Valley and noted that the “company’s second factory also will be built in Fremont, since a Department of Energy loan guarantee mandates a U.S. location.”

November 2008: Silicon prices remain very high on the spot market, making non-silicon based thin film technologies like Solyndra’s very attractive to investors. Solyndra also benefits from having very low installation costs. The company raises $144 million from ten different venture investors, including the Walton-family run Madrone Capital Partners. This brings total private investment to more than $450 million to date.

January 2009: In an effort to show it has done something to support renewable energy, the Bush administration tries to take Solyndra before a DOE credit review committee just one day before President Obama is inaugurated. The committee, consisting of career civil servants with financial expertise, remands the loan back to DOE because it wasn’t ready for conditional commitment.

via Bush admin pushed Solyndra loan guarantee for two years | Grist.

Modern Mythology: Synchronicity, Myth, and the #NWO

Wes Unruh — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 15:19:39 +0000

What kind of alternate education, acculturation, indoctrination would you have to go through to commit and then keep secret such an act? Who would administer this education? How would the operation, and the whole educational and support infrastructure around it, be kept secret from the rest of society? Are the low-paid works in building security, or the majority of decent folks at the CIA or NSA in on it too? Basically, for a conspiracy of this scale to exist, there would have to be an entire parallel society hidden within our own, complete with a full set of parallel institutions to create people with a very different culture among us.

via Modern Mythology: Synchronicity, Myth, and the New World Order: Part 1.

US Marshals: Not Watching Your Assets | Mother Jones

Wes Unruh — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 18:12:29 +0000

In at least eight of the 55 cases taken up by the asset team between 2005 and 2010, the purchaser or the price of the asset was not recorded. On top of that, the team failed to perform sufficient market research to properly value the assets it was eyeing; for some of them, it couldn’t even provide the OIG with bank statements and other basic documentation.

http://m.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/09/us-marshals-not-watching-their-assets?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+Motherjones%252Fmojoblog+%2528MotherJones.com+%257C+MoJoBlog%2529

Thousands of indigenous Colombians given voter cards with fake names | Colombia Reports

Wes Unruh — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:55:39 +0000

Many cards also come with an “illiterate” marker regardless of whether or not the owner can read and write, as many officials never bother to ask, explained Padilla.
Vote buying is also an important issue in indigenous communities, as indigenous people have been known to save their cards and use them only when a politician promises a new roof for a family or a hospital, according to indigenous author Efe Simanaca.
Currently, citizens with comical voting cards can be issued new cards. The process costs more than $50 and indigenous people must pay the relatively high expense of travel to reach a government office.

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/17568-thousands-of-indigenous-colombians-given-voter-cards-with-fake-names.html

Tape Generations on Vimeo

Wes Unruh — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 21:59:46 +0000

Tape Generations by johan rijpma

via Tape Generations on Vimeo.

Modern Mythology: Synchronicity, Myth, and the New World Order: Part 1

Wes Unruh — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 00:42:32 +0000

Believers spend lots of time getting “informed”, but do they really act upon that information? Some do, I suppose: they move to an armed compound in Idaho or hide gold coins in their basement. But most go on with life as usual. How are they any different from their neighbors? Their eyeballs linger over Alex Jones’ website rather than NPR’s, but to what end? They may believe themselves to be among the canny, righteous few, fighting against evil on behalf of the ignorant masses, but mostly they do nothing. Like any addiction, addiction to conspiracy websites or the closely related end-of-the-world websites disempowers people, and actually helps maintain the status quo.

Belief in conspiracy theories is not one of several emotionally coequal world-view alternatives. It is part and parcel of an emotional, psychological, and spiritual state of being. That state of being is a victim state. The belief that events are controlled by malevolent people far more powerful than ourselves, that any attempt at change is futile in the face of the tremendous powers arrayed against us, leaves no alternative but to carve out a small, safe realm of rebellion-in-private. If there were indeed a global conspiracy, it would be quite happy with this result. Paradoxically, then, we might say that the idea that there is a global conspiracy is itself a lie propagated by the global conspiracy.

via Modern Mythology: Synchronicity, Myth, and the New World Order: Part 1.

In One Year, Tumblr Goes From 1 Billion Posts To 10 Billion | TechCrunch

Wes Unruh — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 19:00:09 +0000

They just hit 10 billion posts across the network.The numbers are staggering. It was only a year ago that they hit 1 billion posts. Since then, they’ve 10x’d that number.

via In One Year, Tumblr Goes From 1 Billion Posts To 10 Billion | TechCrunch.

Google gives patents to HTC who then uses patents to sue Apple #PatentWars

Wes Unruh — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 15:42:48 +0000

The lawsuit contends the Mac computer, iPhone, iPod, iPad, iCloud and iTunes are infringing patents for a way to upgrade software wirelessly; a way to transfer data between a microprocessor and a support chip; a method to store user preferences, and a way to provide consistent contact between application software and a radio modem.

HTC also amended a complaint with the trade commission yesterday, adding five of the former Google patents to a case that targets many of the same products. Three of those patents Google bought from Openwave and two others had been owned by Palm, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ last year.

via Google Hands HTC Patents to Use Against Apple – Bloomberg.

Jung: On The Shadow

Wes Unruh — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 22:13:51 +0000

In reality, the acceptance of the shadow-side of human nature verges on the impossible. Consider for a moment what it means to grant the right of existence to what is unreasonable, senseless, and evil! Yet it is just this that the modern man insists upon. He wants to live with every side of himself-to know what he is. That is why he casts history aside. He wants to break with tradition so that he can experiment with his life and determine what value and meaning things have in themselves, apart from traditional resuppositions.

“Psychotherapist or the Clergy” 1932. In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.528

via Jung: On The Shadow.

Horrifying abuse in #Mormon boarding schools

Wes Unruh — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 02:44:01 +0000

     The plaintiffs say that 59 schools and owners tied to the company “jointly promoted, advertised, and marketed defendants’ residential boarding schools as a place where children with problems could get an education while receiving instruction and direction in behavior modification for emotional growth and personal development.”
     But they say the children were subjected to physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the schools including, Cross Creek Center for Boys, Brightway Adolescent Hospital and Red Rock Springs. They say the abuses inflicted upon some children for years “could be accurately described as torture.”
     According to the complaint, students were locked in boxes, cages and basements at the schools, denied medical and dental care, and forced “to carry heavy bags of sand around their necks or logs throughout the day over many days.”
     They were sexually abused, “which included forced sexual relations and acts of fondling and masturbation performed on them,” according to the 119-page complaint.
     Students were “forced to eat their own vomit … bound and tied by hands and/or feet … chained and locked in dog cages … forced to lie in, or wear, urine and feces … forced to sleep on cold concrete floors, boxspring, or plywood,” and put to forced labor, the complaint states.
     Children were “kicked, beaten, thrown and slammed to the ground … forced to eat raw or rotten food … poked and prodded with various objects while being strip searched … denied any religious affiliation, except for the Mormon faith … [and] threatened [with] severe punishment, including death, if they told anyone of their abuses and poor living conditions,” according to the complaint.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/09/06/39546.htm

“A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” by John Perry Barlow

Wes Unruh — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:02:51 +0000

by John Perry Barlow

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.

You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.

You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don’t exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract . This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.

Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.

We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.

Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge . Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.

In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.

You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.

In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.

Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.

These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.

We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

Davos, Switzerland

February 8, 1996

via www.cyberguerrilla.info » Anonymous pOsting heRe!.

Phase one of world’s first commercial spaceport is now 90 per cent completed – in time for first flights in 2013 | Mail Online

Wes Unruh — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 14:25:56 +0000

The 1,800-acre Spaceport America site, in Las Cruces, New Mexico, is the home base for Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson’s most ambitious business venture yet. It already boasts a runway stretching to nearly two miles long, a futuristic styled terminal hanger, and a dome-shaped Space Operations Centre.

via Phase one of world’s first commercial spaceport is now 90 per cent completed – in time for first flights in 2013 | Mail Online.

Debunking the New World Order Mythology

Wes Unruh — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 02:53:24 +0000

Think about it. Dont bitch about the media. Become the media. Be who you are, uncompromisingly so and dont worry about the consequences. Do this and you will receive much less resistance than otherwise, and in fact you may begin to find that people respect you more. If they do not respect you, they will hate you, or perhaps better yet fear you… In which case, you are still influencing them more than if you just kept your mouth shut and kept your real thoughts to yourself. Try an experiment: See if you can go a whole day being as uncompromisingly honest as you can. See and take note of how uncomfortable it makes the people around you, who more often than not are not used to human beings acting with integrity and being forthcoming in social settings.

via Modern Mythology: Debunking the New World Order Mythology.

Consequences of #Islamophobia

Wes Unruh — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:11:38 +0000

Because the small number of extremists responsible for 9/11 and terrorist attacks in Europe and the Muslim world legitimated their acts in the name of Islam, we have seen an exponential increase in the past ten years of hostility and intolerance towards fellow Muslim citizens. This hatred threatens the democratic fabric of American and European societies and impacts not only the safety and civil liberties of Muslims but also, as the attacks in Norway demonstrate, the safety of all citizens.
The broad spectrum of preachers of hate that include politicians, media commentators, Christian Zionist ministers, and biased media and internet sites exploit legitimate concerns about domestic security and engage in a fear-mongering that conflates Islam and the majority of Muslims with a small but deadly minority of militants. The Gallup World Poll revealed that 57% of Americans when asked what they admired about Islam said “nothing” or “I don’t know.” So. too, a Washington Post poll revealed that a shocking 49% of Americans view Islam unfavorably.

http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/the-consequences-of-islamophobia-in-the-u.s.-and-abroad/0018759

Public sector employees hear anti-government rhetoric

Wes Unruh — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 14:05:35 +0000

There are about 2.2 million civilian employees of the federal
government alone (not counting the U.S. Postal Service, which is
self-sustaining). That makes it the nation’s largest employer.
Federal workers account for about one of every 66 U.S. jobs
today.
That may sound like a lot, but in fact it’s been dropping as a
percentage of the total workforce for decades. The number of
nonpostal federal workers has hovered at right around 2 million
since the late 1960s, even as the total U.S. workforce has grown.
Twenty years ago, there was one federal employee for every 40 U.S.
workers. Forty years ago, it was one of every 28.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_c0db3101-7519-528b-b401-fe1890d4f630.html

Inside the Christian Right Dominionist Movement That’s Undermining Democracy

Wes Unruh — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 01:48:22 +0000

Dominionists want to impose a form of Christian nationalism on the United States, a concept that was dismissed as eroding freedom and democracy by the founders of our country.
Dominionism has become a major influence on the right-wing populist Tea Parties as Christian Right activists have flooded into the movement at the grassroots.

At the same time, legitimate questions have been raised about whether or not potential Republican presidential nominees Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, or Sarah Palin have moved from a generic form of Christian Right Dominionism toward the more totalitarian form know as Dominion Theology.

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/9/4/8954/17253/Front_Page/Inside_the_Christian_Right_Dominionist_Movement_That_s_Undermining_Democracy

The future of the GOP

Wes Unruh — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 18:23:46 +0000

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.

http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779

Why those hungry ghosts need to be appeased

Wes Unruh — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 17:12:13 +0000

The “dual souls” consisted of “po”, referring to the intellectual power and mental faculties of a person, and “hun”, the human emotions and feelings and source of consciousness.

This dual concept later evolved into a single entity after the introduction of Buddhism into China, and what subsequently came to be known as ‘shen’, or spirit.

When a person loses his ‘po’, his behaviour becomes erratic and his reasoning power and judgment suffers, eventually resulting in his death.

Professor Lo explained: “When a person dies a violent death or with grievances, his ‘hun’ may linger on to cause trouble. ”

“The ‘hun’ then needs to be appeased with appropriate sacrifices.”

via Why those hungry ghosts need to be appeased.

The star that should not exist

Wes Unruh — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 17:07:22 +0000

At the center of this picture is a very unremarkable looking faint star, too faint to be seen through all but the largest amateur telescopes. This ancient star, in the constellation of Leo The Lion, is called SDSS J102915+172927 and has been found to have the lowest amount of elements heavier than helium of all stars yet studied. It has a mass smaller than that of the Sun and is probably more than 13 billion years old.

via The star that should not exist.

Cagliostro

Wes Unruh — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 00:49:23 +0000

April 12, 1777, Cagliostro became a Freemason…

via Cagliostro:

Baron von Gleichen, a man of irreproachable integrity and wide experience, declared that “Cagliostro’s Egyptian Masonry was worth the lot of them, for he tried to render it not only more wonderful, but more honorable than any other Masonic Order in Europe.”Although Cagliostro’s Egyptian Rite was open to both sexes, his was by no means the first attempt to give women a standing in Masonry. The Grand Orient of France established a “Rite of Adoption” in 1774. The Duchesse de Bourbon was Grand Mistress of the Rite in 1775, and in 1805 the Empress Josephine acted in the same capacity.

Cagliostro made his first speech on Egyptian Masonry in The Hague, where a Lodge was formed in accordance with the Rite. In Nürnberg, when Cagliostro was asked for his secret sign, he replied by drawing the picture of a serpent biting its own tail. This symbol was the “Circle of Necessity” of the ancient Egyptians, and it is also found on the seal of the Theosophical Society. After establishing his Egyptian Rite in other German cities, Cagliostro arrived in Mittau, capital of the Duchy of Courland, in March 1779. The Masonic Lodge in Mittau was composed principally of noblemen, most of whom were interested in some branch of the occult sciences. The head of this Lodge, the Marshal von Medem, had been a student of alchemy from his early youth, and he welcomed his new brother with open arms. Cagliostro was immediately invited to give an exhibition of his occult powers. He refused, declaring that such powers should never be displayed for the gratification of idle curiosity. Later, after much persuasion, he consented. As a result, some of his new friends began to look upon him as a supernatural being, while others denounced him as a charlatan.

Cagliostro then proceeded to St. Petersburg, where he appeared for the first time as a magnetic healer. In May, 1780, he arrived in Warsaw, then a great stronghold of both Masonry and Occultism. There he was entertained by Prince Poninski, whose initiation into the Egyptian Rite gained the adherence of a large number of the Polish nobility. The King of Poland heard of Cagliostro’s occult powers through a prediction he made to a young lady of the Court. “I do not know,” writes Laborde, “what confidence the King and the young lady placed in these predictions, but I do know that they were all fulfilled.”

In September, 1780, Cagliostro reached Strasbourg, the capital of Alsace. On the morning of his arrival crowds of people gathered on both banks of the Rhine to catch a glimpse of the mysterious stranger whose fame as a magnetic healer and friend of humanity had preceded him. From the day of his arrival in Strasbourg Cagliostro gave up his entire time to altruistic service. No sick or needy person appealed to him in vain. Every day he visited the unfortunate, whose distress he relieved not only with money, but, as Baron von Gleichen says, “with manifestations of a sympathy that went to the hearts of the sufferers and doubled the valueof the actions.” He refused all compensation for his services, and if a present were given to him, he repaid it with a counter present of double value. He supported his poor patients for months at a time, often lodging them in his own house and feeding them at his own table. Like Mesmer, Cagliostro treated his patients magnetically, applying the force directly without the aid of magnetized objects. When he left Strasbourg 15,000 people claimed to have been helped by him.

Shortly after Cagliostro’s arrival in Strasbourg he was summoned to the palace of the Prince Cardinal de Rohan, who was deeply interested in the occult sciences and possessed one of the finest alchemical libraries in Europe. When Cagliostro was invited to live in the Cardinal’s palace, malicious tongues began to wag, and the rumor spread that His Holiness was spending a fortune upon his new friend. The Baronesse d’Oberkirch repeated the gossip to the Cardinal, who vehemently asserted that “Cagliostro is a most extraordinary, a most sublime man, whose knowledge is equaled only by his goodness. What alms he gives! What good he does! I can assure you that he has never asked for nor received anything from me!”

After leaving Strasbourg, Cagliostro went to Bordeaux and Lyons, where Saint-Martin had formerly lived. These cities welcomed him as a new prophet, and many influential men and women were initiated into his Egyptian Rite. In Lyons his Rite was so highly acclaimed that a special Temple was built for its observance, which later became the Mother Lodge of Egyptian Masonry.

Cagliostro settled in Paris in 1785, and his house on the Rue St. Claude became the talk of the town. The entrance hall was adorned with a black marble slab upon which was engraved Pope’s Universal Prayer. Statuettes of Isis, Anubis and Apis stood along the walls, which were covered with Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the two lackeys were clothed like Egyptian slaves as they appear on the monuments of Thebes. Cagliostro received his guests in a black silk robe and an Arabian turban made of cloth of gold and sparkling with jewels. He had a striking countenance with “eyes of fire which burned to the bottom of the soul.” Cardinal de Rohan confessed that when he first saw Cagliostro he found a dignity so imposing that he was penetrated with awe. According to Georgel, Cagliostro “lived in the greatest affluence, giving much to the needy and seeking no favors from the rich,” although no one seemed to know the source of his income. His friends addressed him as “Grand Master,” and busts of le divin Cagliostro adorned the salons of his admirers.

Shortly after Cagliostro’s arrival in Paris he was invited to membership in the Philalethès, a Rite founded in 1773 in the Loge des Amis Réunis. The Mother Lodge was a Theosophical organization founded by Savalette des Langes, whose manuscripts, after his death, passed to the Philosophical Scottish Rite. Cagliostro joined the Philalethians hoping to infuse some Theosophical principles into their Rite. There are many landmarks in Cagliostro’s biographies showing that he taught the doctrine of the “principles” in man and the presence of the indwelling God, and there seems to be no doubt that he served the Masters of a Fraternity he would not — could not — name. This fact is admitted by Kenneth Mackenzie:

It is a rule recognized amongst adepts — in fact, a stringent obligation — that they shall not reveal the identity of their preceptors and initiators; and if that rule was applicable in times before Cagliostro, so it was in his own time. He was sent, in accordance with occult discipline, to rove about Europe, and we have before seen him under the protection of the Knights and Order of Malta; he completes his course by going to Paris and London, and there he was initiated into Masonry. (Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia, p. 99.)

In Cagliostro’s letter to the Philalethians he assured them that the “unknown Grand Master of true Masonry” had cast his eyes upon them, as he wished to prove to them “the original dignity of man, his powers and destiny . . . of which true Masonry gives the symbols and indicates the real road.” When the Philalethians refused his help, Cagliostro replied: “We have offered you the truth; you have disdained it. We have offered it for the sake of itself, and you have refused it in consequence of your love of forms.” Cagliostro’s own Egyptian Rite, however, flourished from the moment he reached Paris. One of the first persons to be initiated was the young Marquis de Lafayette, already a high Mason and the leader of the pre-Revolutionary period in France. Cagliostro also acted as delegate to the two great Masonic conventions which took place in Wilhelmsbad and Paris in 1782 and 1785.On August 23, 1785, Cagliostro was accused of complicity in the “Diamond Necklace Affair” and sent to the Bastille. After being imprisoned for nine months he was honorably acquitted, but at the same time (as the Queen was implicated in the scandal) he was asked to leave France. Upon his arrival in England he was accused by the French spy Morande of being the notorious Giuseppe Balsamo. Cagliostro refuted Morande’s accusation in an Open Letter to the English People. Morande was forced to retract his statements and apologize to his readers. Nevertheless for the past 150 years historians have continued to confound Cagliostro with Giuseppe Balsamo.

Broken-hearted by the loss of his good name, Cagliostro left England. After years of wandering he arrived in Rome in the spring of 1789. Making one last desperate effort to revive his Egyptian Rite, he was prevailed upon to initiate two men, who proved to be spies of the Inquisition. On the evening of December 27, 1789, he was arrested and thrown into a dungeon in the Castle of St. Angelo. Shortly afterward he was sentenced to death, the sole charge against him being that he was a Mason, and therefore engaged in unlawful studies. As an instance of the hatred of the Papal government for Freemasonry, part of Cagliostro’s sentence, issued on March 21, 1791, is worth quoting:

Giuseppe Balsamo, convicted of many crimes, and of having incurred the censures and penalties pronounced against heretics, has been found guilty and condemned to the said censures and penalties as decreed by the Apostolic laws of Clement XII and Benedict XIV, against all persons who in any manner whatever favor or form societies and conventicles of Freemasonry, as well as by the edict of the Council of State against all persons convicted of this crime in Rome or in any other place in the dominions of the Pope.

During his imprisonment Cagliostro’s private papers, family relics, diplomas from foreign Courts, his Masonic regalia and even his manuscript on Egyptian Masonry were publicly burned in the Piazza della Minerva. While the condemned Occultist was awaiting his fate, a mysterious stranger demanded an audience with the Pope. He was received, and immediately thereafter Cagliostro’s death sentence was changed to life imprisonment in the Castle of St. Leo, located on the frontiers of Tuscany. This Castle stands on the summit of an enormous rock with almost perpendicular sides. Cagliostro was pulled up the side of the mountain in a basket and incarcerated in a dungeon. Here he languished for three years, writing a sentence every day on the walls of his living tomb. The last entry bears the date of March 6, 1795. Exactly seven months later, on October 6, the Paris Moniteur contained a small paragraph announcing that “it is reported in Rome that the famous Cagliostro is dead.”If this statement was true, and Cagliostro actually did die in the Castle of St. Leo, why are tourists shown the little square hole in the Castle of St. Angelo in Romewhere he is said to have expired? After his supposed death it was whispered that Cagliostro had escaped from his dungeon in some miraculous manner, thus forcing his jailers to spread the news of his death. Blavatsky says that “having made a series of mistakes, more or less fatal, he was recalled.” His downfall, she declared, was due to his weakness for an unworthy woman and to his possession of certain secrets of nature which he refused to divulge to the Church.

A century and a half have passed since then, and modern Masons, although describing Cagliostro as “a Masonic martyr” (a change of heart due principally, it seems, to the influence of Trowbridge’s book), also write of him as a “medium” who perhaps resorted to trickery and employed the devices of a mountebank. (See The New Age, XXVII, Nos. 5 and 6.) How long will thoughtless people continue to defame the good names of the living and mar the memory of the dead by repeating slanders and calumnies? Blavatsky declared that Cagliostro’s justification must take place in this century — a task in which Theosophists can do their part.

Excerpted from THEOSOPHY, Vol. 26, No. 12, October, 1938.

Scientist killed in explosion at Menlo Park R&D firm

Wes Unruh — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 14:23:59 +0000

Twenty-three people were evacuated from the large, two-story building at 1360 Willow Road that houses Membrane Technology and Research, while officials determined whether any hazardous materials had been released in the explosion. The surrounding residences and businesses were quickly deemed safe from harm.

http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_18816617?nclick_check=1

Phone hacking: victims’ lawyers were targeted – #NotW

Wes Unruh — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 14:23:53 +0000

News International sanctioned the use of private detectives as recently as six months ago to conduct surveillance and compile dossiers on the private lives of three lawyers who are leading damages claims against the News of the World for illegal phone hacking.

One of the lawyers, Mark Lewis, whose clients include the family of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, told The Independent that the use of private detectives against him “crossed a new line” and threatened his ability to do his job. The reports gathered on the lawyers include claims about their personal lives, political beliefs and health.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/phone-hacking-victims-lawyers-were-targeted-2348387.html

Max Boot: Did Libya Vindicate ‘Leading From Behind’?

Wes Unruh — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 14:23:42 +0000

Is this the new war model? Probably, since…

after six months of war, the president’s supporters are even suggesting that Operation Unified Protector, as the international intervention was formally known, offers a new model for the use of force: one where the U.S. acts at low cost to defend human rights by putting allies into the lead. An anonymous administration official dubbed this “leading from behind”—a term that has raised hackles on the right

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904583204576542150445426260.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Unifying Voice

Wes Unruh — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 18:53:35 +0000

Unification consists of four interconnected tropes formulated as follows: a commercial use trope, described as a ‘noneconomic interpretation of economic ills’ + a inborn dignity trope, which uses the concept of a pure, human birthright that elevates ‘us’ as more noble than ‘them’ + projection device that scapegoats ‘them’ as a cause of ‘our’ problems + a promise of a symbolic rebirth that will come about if ‘they’ can be purged from ‘our’ presence.

This unification is necessary to establish a sense of history, which in turn imparts a spatial presence to each utterance. Unification messages built of universal experiences and patterns of experience can act to give a sense of community in relation to a larger cultural pool. But unification built of opposition establishes a dualism which is further exploited to accelerate conflict. When this is established, it has also prepared a stage for enacting accusations in various ways. Each accusation can be thought of as a single utterance performed within the frames of acceptance and rejection. The accusation is an act of moral entrepreneurship within these frames, the final manifestation of which is the elimination of the accused from the social space by whatever means are at hand.

Followers of the rhetor who uses all of these effectively will find themselves oriented toward an apocalyptic dualism which, should their cognitive capabilities be sufficiently deconstructed, they will act out, first internally and through mediated spaces, and ultimately alone in in groups.

via More on Eliminationist Rhetoric (and a movie!) — Wes Unruh.

Worse Than War – PBS Video on #eliminationism

Wes Unruh — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 19:28:32 +0000

WORSE THAN WAR documents Daniel Jonah Goldhagens travels, teachings, and interviews in nine countries, bringing viewers on an unprecedented journey of insight and analysis. He speaks with victims, perpetrators, witnesses, politicians, diplomats, historians, aid workers, and journalists, all with the purpose of explaining and understanding the features of genocide and how to stop it.

via Worse Than War | Worse Than War | PBS Video.

Allan Lichtman Picks Obama to Win

Wes Unruh — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 18:31:32 +0000

Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than it did after the previous midterm elections. Says Lichtman, “Even back in January 2010 when I first released my predictions, I was already counting on a significant loss.” Obama loses this key.
Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination. Says Lichtman on Obama’s unchallenged status, “I never thought there would be any serious contest against Barack Obama in the Democratic primary.” Obama wins this key.
Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president. Easy win here for Obama.
Third Party: There is no significant third party challenge. Obama wins this point.
Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. Here Lichtman declares an “undecided.”
Long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. Says Lichtman, “I discounted long term economy against Obama. Clearly we are in a recession.” Obama loses this key.
Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy. “There have been major policy changes in this administration. We’ve seen the biggest stimulus in history and an complete overhaul of the healthcare system so I gave him policy change,” says the scholar. Another win for Obama.
Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term. Says Lichtman, “There wasn’t any social unrest when I made my predictions for 2012 and there still isn’t.” Obama wins a fifth key here.
Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. “This administration has been squeaky clean. There’s nothing on scandal,” says Lichtman. Another Obama win.
Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. Says Lichtman, “We haven’t seen any major failure that resembles something like the Bay of Pigs and don’t foresee anything.” Obama wins again.
Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. “Since Osama bin Laden was found and killed, I think Obama has achieved military success.” Obama wins his eighth key.
Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero. Explains Lichtman, “I did not give President Obama the incumbent charisma key. I counted it against him. He’s really led from behind. He didn’t really take the lead in the healthcare debate, he didn’t use his speaking ability to move the American people during the recession. He’s lost his ability to connect since the 2008 election.” Obama loses this key. [See political cartoons about President Obama.]
Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. Says Lichtman, “We haven’t seen any candidate in the GOP who meets this criteria and probably won’t.” Obama wins, bringing his total to nine keys, three more than needed to win reelection.

via PAUL BEDARD , LAUREN FOX Never-Wrong Pundit Picks Obama to Win in 2012 – Washington Whispers (usnews.com).

The Cinema of The Future: Francis Ford Coppola’s Twixt – via @FoolishPeople

Wes Unruh — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 17:16:29 +0000

Francis Ford Coppola’s Twixt shall debut this September at the Toronto International Film Festival. Twixt shall herald a new, non-linear film making experience which incorporates live music and narration, as well as 2D and 3D sequences. Using shuffling software, the film’s scenes can be completely randomised with performance artist and electronic musician Dan Deacon altering the film’s live aspect to suit. In a sense, this “remixing” technique will mean that every audience sees a different edit and therefore a unique version of the film. Coppola plans to begin his 30 city tour of the film later this year. Discussing his cinematic experiment he claims:

“Cinema is so young! How dare anyone think all it has got up its sleeve is more 3D where the ticket prices go up? Cinema is a baby. Of course we’re going to see wonderful innovations come; there will be many”.

via The Cinema of The Future: Coppola Presents… – FoolishPeople.

Free Libya Raises Its Head | The Weekly Standard

Wes Unruh — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:16:05 +0000

No Libyan doubted that once protests broke out on February 17, Qaddafi was willing to murder as many of his own people as necessary to remain in power. One would think that a “rational” dictator faced with an armed popular uprising and NATO bombardment, and concerned about self-preservation, would at some point give in to reality and accept an escape clause. But to presume that Qaddafi is rational is to misunderstand the nature of his dictatorship. His mad, grumbling orders last week to “purify” Tripoli of “rats, crusaders, and unbelievers,” the latest in a stream of eliminationist rhetoric, are the words of a man obviously willing to commit wholesale mass murder. It is to the credit of NATO that it decided to demonstrate that the alliance would not tolerate the perpetration of such atrocities.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/free-libya-raises-its-head_591428.html

Modern Mythology: Confirmed Reptilians, Eliminationist Rhetoric, and Literal Racisms

Wes Unruh — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 16:55:52 +0000

Years ago, my first thoughts upon encountering the reptilian agenda or reptilian mythic framework was to think of it as A Case of Conscience meets Darker Then You Think, although the more obvious mythic maps you as a media consumer might be familiar with are Land of the Lost plus V. Imagine a race of lizard men who are always watching from the edges of society, like predators, feeding on misery. The reptilian narrative has it that an intergalactic race, the Draconis, has been interbreeding with humans since ancient times, and those bloodlines are responsible for manipulating events throughout history. And these reptilians and half-humans need to eat people to maintain their human appearance.

via Modern Mythology: Confirmed Reptilians, Eliminationist Rhetoric, and Literal Racisms.

Class action suit says Florida Highway Patrol illegally tickets motorists who warn others about speed traps

Wes Unruh — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 17:17:46 +0000

If each person illegally cited was awarded $15,000 that would be $156,435,000 in damages if the suit is successful. Then you would throw in at least another $1,042,900 in ticket refunds, all because it appears troopers dont like motorists warning others about speed traps.

Campbell says he felt as if the trooper thought it was a personal affront. According to Campbell, the trooper did not like the fact somebody was ratting him out.

The Florida Highway Patrol says it cant comment because of the pending lawsuit.

Campbell says FHP had no right to ticket him or anyone under the current law and he adds the agency is not being honest when it says it doesnt write tickets to increase revenue or punish people, but rather to get the motorist to slow down on the highway. If that were true, Campbell says the FHP should be delighted with him, because drivers did slow down before troopers could give them a ticket.

via Class action suit says Florida Highway Patrol illegally tickets motorists who warn others about speed traps | wtsp.com.

Our post-Beck world…

Wes Unruh — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 19:01:10 +0000

Yossi Sarid seemed to speak for many Israelis who weren’t thrilled with having Beck’s circus in their country either, “Beck, Hagee and their swarm are anti-Semites, who are not even aware of their anti-Semitism and the extent of its ugliness. Or maybe they are. In recent years this anti-Semitism has not been directed mainly against Jews, for they have found the Arab substitute for it. Now they are using the Arabs to scare Israel and the Muslims to scare the world. And the white, Aryan lion will devour them and their undercover envoys such as Barack Hussein. The visit ended yesterday, the circus is folding its tent and moving elsewhere. Let’s pray it will not return soon. Mr. Beck, don’t come back. We’re not short of dangerous wackos here.”

http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/no_one_gives_a_shit_about_a_glenn_beck_anymore/

College Students stumped by Google, clueless about Ctrl+F

Wes Unruh — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:37:14 +0000

Dan Russell told The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal that 90 percent of American Google users do not know how to use CTRL or Command+F to find a word on a page. Russell says he’s watched people patiently scan documents for a word or phrase, when they could use that simple trick and save time. “Just like we learn to skim tables of content or look through an index or just skim chapter titles to find what we’re looking for, we need to teach people about this CTRL+F thing,” Madrigal writes.

http://m.yahoo.com/w/news_america/blogs/lookout/college-students-stumped-search-engines-research-finds-193221656.html?orig_host_hdr=news.yahoo.com&.intl=us&.lang=en-us

Stephen King of Talk Radio?

Wes Unruh — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 21:28:56 +0000

“We’re going to try to be informative. We’re going to be provocative. We’re going to be amusing, and we’re going to try to be a positive community force,” King told reporters at the press conference, according to local paper the Bangor Daily News.
LaMarche said the show would be targeting politicians who bully Maine residents – in particular those struggling with the welfare system. “There’s an awful lot of bullying going on out there right now [and] nothing is more fun than standing up to a bully,” she said. “We want you to laugh all the time because if you don’t, you’ll cry.”

http://m.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/24/stephen-king-pulse-radio-show?cat=books&type=article

#otc liver damage

Wes Unruh — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 18:09:05 +0000

The most commonly used painkiller in the US is acetaminophen (brand name Tylenol). This is easily available over the counter. Acetaminophen is also in sleep aids (for instance, Tylenol-PM), and in strong prescription narcotic painkillers such as Vicodin and Percocet. Recent studies have found that acetaminophen is the leading cause of liver damage and probably is responsible for 1600 cases of acute liver failure that occur each year. The drug is thought to be safe at the recommended dose but because it is in so many different kinds of medication, people often end up taking double or even triple doses if they are using different painkillers or sleep aids. An FDA advisory panel urged the FDA to ban Percocet and Vicodin and other prescription drugs that contain acetaminophen. Due to the amount of money made by pharmaceutical companies by the sales of narcotic medications, and the fact they spend about $150 million per year lobbying our government officials, it will be a long time before any real changes take place.

http://www.showbizspy.com/article/236947/elijah-wood-wants-a-higher-tolerance-for-marijuana.html

Star Trek Generations – Wikiquote

Wes Unruh — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 23:38:48 +0000

Geordi La Forge: What’s normal? Tolian Soran: “What’s normal?” Well, that’s a good question. Normal is what everyone else is and you are not. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Star_Trek_Generations Related posts: Never-before-seen ‘Star Trek’ pilot found – The Live Feed | THR James R. Rummel points out that in the Star Trek universe, there is no money Cryptic Launches [...] Related posts:

Rep. Chabot Bans Cameras At Town Hall As Constituents Chant ‘Where Are The Jobs?’ | VIA @thinkprogress #newWPA

Wes Unruh — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 18:11:43 +0000

Fearing pushback on issues like ending Medicare and corporate tax dodging, Chabot took an extraordinary step in order to prevent a possible “Youtube moment”: he banned constituents from filming the town hall. Outside the town hall were multiple signs reading, “For Security Purposes, Cameras Are NOT Permitted.” In fact, on at least two separate occasions, middle-aged constituents who tried to record the public event had their cameras confiscated and were asked to leave.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/23/302027/rep-chabot-bans-cameras-at-town-hall-as-constituents-chant-where-are-the-jobs/

Invisible Town Hall Revolution Gets Bigger and Bigger | #newWPA

Wes Unruh — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 18:11:20 +0000

This is a real thing. And in the final two weeks of the Congressional recess, it’s only poised to continue. Maybe the media will take notice. http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/08/23/invisible-town-hall-revolution-gets-bigger-and-bigger/ Related posts: Rep. Chabot Bans Cameras At Town Hall As Constituents Chant ‘Where Are The Jobs?’ | VIA @thinkprogress #newWPA Rep. Chabot Bans Cameras At Town Hall As [...] Related posts:

Rep. Chabot Bans Cameras At Town Hall As Constituents Chant ‘Where Are The Jobs?’ | VIA @thinkprogress #newWPA

Wes Unruh — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 17:14:39 +0000

Fearing pushback on issues like ending Medicare and corporate tax dodging, Chabot took an extraordinary step in order to prevent a possible “Youtube moment”: he banned constituents from filming the town hall. Outside the town hall were multiple signs reading, “For Security Purposes, Cameras Are NOT Permitted.” In fact, on at least two separate occasions, middle-aged constituents who tried to record the public event had their cameras confiscated and were asked to leave.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/23/302027/rep-chabot-bans-cameras-at-town-hall-as-constituents-chant-where-are-the-jobs/

William Gheen openly calling for violence to stop “Obama’s War On White America” (seriously wtf)

Wes Unruh — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 13:11:16 +0000

William Gheen of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC joined Janet Mefferd today to make the case that President Obama is now a dictator who plans to create a police state and use undocumented immigrants to wage war on “White America.” Gheen, who previously accused Obama of treason and “replacing many core Americans” (among other radical claims), told Mefferd that “extra-political activities that I can’t really talk about because they’re all illegal and violent” may be needed to bring down Obama.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/gheen-violence-may-be-needed-stop-obamas-war-white-america

Head of S&P to step down after downgrading US

Wes Unruh — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 13:02:49 +0000

McGraw-Hill’s statement did not mention of the Aug. 5 downgrade that sent shock waves through global financial markets and was sharply criticized by the Obama administration, which said the agency’s analysis was fundamentally flawed. Other major rating agencies have maintained their AAA ratings on the U.S.
It also did not refer to recent reports that the Justice Department was investigating whether S&P improperly rated dozens of mortgage securities in the years leading up to the financial crisis in 2008. Those reports sent McGraw-Hill’s shares tumbling last week.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_STANDARD__POORS_PRESIDENT_3RD_LD_WRITETHRU?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

An Interview by Members of The One True TOPI Tribe compilation

Wes Unruh — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 14:14:25 +0000

The One True TOPI Tribe Compilation is an international accomplishment of the tribe, and it is this unity (the Third Mind) that this interview aims to promote, while as acting as a small window into two tribe members relationship with life and art. The One True TOPI Tribe compilation is the work of over thirty individuals, and we thank them all. The One True TOPI Tribe was create by occultural engineer/artist/musician/actor, etc. Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. We of the tribe dedicate this work toward the greater realization of coum-Unity.

http://www.modernmythology.net/2011/08/topi-talks-interview-by-members-of-one.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+indiemedia+%28Modern+Mythology%3A+Culture%2C+Myth%2C+Psychology%2C+Media%2C+Sexuality%2C+and+You%29&m=1

Rick Perry’s Hardcore History of Investment in Porn (re: movie gallery, tort reform)

Wes Unruh — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:44:01 +0000

What kind of man are we dealing with in Rick Perry? Is he still profiting off of what the AFA calls obscene pornography? Is he still making money off of titles like “Teens with Tits”? In keeping with this line of inquiry into his purported “family values”, we note that Perry also kept on the director of the Texas Film Commission who was disciplined for sexual harassment…twice.

The Statesman reported, “Gov. Rick Perry’s outgoing director of the Texas Film Commission has been allowed to stay on the job despite being disciplined for sexual harassment in 2009 and after a subsequent investigation found similar behavior again this year.”

What disturbs me about these two facts is how well they dovetail with the Dominionists’ ideas about women being subservient to the patriarch.

via Rick Perry’s Hardcore History of Investment in Porn.

Daniel Kahneman: Intuition

Wes Unruh — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 14:20:24 +0000

Daniel Kahneman is an internationally renowned psychologist whose work spans cognitive psychology, behavioral economics, and the science of well-being. In recognition of his groundbreaking work on human judgment and decision-making, Kahneman received the 2002 Nobel Prize. In this program he explores the idea of intuition.

via YouTube – Explorations of the Mind: Intuition.

Peter Thiel funding creation of artificial libertarian islands

Wes Unruh — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 13:13:17 +0000

“There are quite a lot of people who think it’s not possible,” Thiel said at a Seasteading Institute Conference in 2009, according to Details. (His first donation was in 2008, for $500,000.) “That’s a good thing. We don’t need to really worry about those people very much, because since they don’t think it’s possible they won’t take us very seriously. And they will not actually try to stop us until it’s too late.”

The Seasteading Institute’s Patri Friedman says the group plans to launch an office park off the San Francisco coast next year, with the first full-time settlements following seven years later.

via Silicon Valley billionaire funding creation of artificial libertarian islands | The Lookout – Yahoo! News.

Empire Avenue /hashtag #EAv Nets $1.2 Million in Funding

Wes Unruh — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 18:26:05 +0000

“Social stock market” Empire Avenue announced a $1.2 million round of funding today, led by Pandora investor Crosslink Capital. The money will go toward expanding the company’s team and into development on its virtual-currency-driven platform.Other participants in the round include iNovia Capital and video game studio BioWare founders Drs. Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk. Empire Avenue was originally created by a team of ex-BioWare, Electronic Arts and MySQL employees.

via Empire Avenue Nets $1.2 Million in Funding.

2011: Self-Assembling Dynamic Networks And Boundary-less Tribalism

Wes Unruh — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 21:11:02 +0000

With the growth of the Internet and with its capacity to communicate any and every idea or thought to anyone on the planet 24/7, we have created the ultimate platform for tribal behaviour. Human beings are social animals and need some form of community. Since the time our ancestors gathered together in caves for protection and food we have formed tribes and exhibit tribal behaviour. As civilisation has advanced our tribes have become more numerous and specific. They have developed into institutions, communities and sovereign nations. Now they are manifest as digital tribes, which can be created instantaneously as self-assembling dynamic networks.

via 2011: Self-Assembling Dynamic Networks And Boundary-less Tribalism.

Wisconsin recall efforts fall short amid corruption fears #WIrecall .. VIA MetaFilter

Wes Unruh — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 15:06:44 +0000

Wisconsin recall efforts fall short amid corruption fears | MetaFilter.

After weeks of fake primaries, fraudulent mailers, special interest moneybombs, and last-minute attempts at voter suppression, Wisconsinites went to the polls yesterday in an unprecedented round of six recall elections targeted mainly at Republican state senators for their support of Governor Scott Walker’s controversial union-busting agenda. Five of the six races were called by Tuesday evening, with Democrats taking two of the three they’d need to regain control of the state senate. The lone holdout? A dead heat between incumbent Alberta Darling and challenger Sandy Pasch in District 8 — the very same district that saw suspicious vote-counting by conservative Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus unexpectedly tip the balance towards Walker ally David Prosser late in the crucial state supreme court race this past April. The protracted count and late-night shift toward Darling coupled with Nickolaus’s questionable history soon prompted Democratic officials to make accusations of fraud (later retracted). Control of the senate now lies in the defense of two Democratic seats up for recall next week and the possible wooing of GOP Senator Dale Schultz, the only Republican to vote against Walker’s bill. Walker himself will be eligible for recall next spring.

Are Your Co-Workers Killing You? | via Wired.com

Wes Unruh — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 14:25:18 +0000

Why are caustic co-workers so unhealthy? One interesting factor influencing the correlation between peer social support and mortality was the perception of control. This makes sense: the only thing worse than an office full of assholes is an office full of assholes telling us what to do. Furthermore, this model of workplace stress being driven by the absence of control has plenty of empirical support…. The British civil service comes with one other feature that makes it ideal for studying the health effects of stress: It’s hierarchical, with a precise classification scheme for ranking employees. This hierarchy comes with dramatic health consequences. After tracking thousands of civil servants for decades, the Whitehall data revealed that between the ages of 40 and 64, workers at the bottom of the hierarchy had a mortality rate four times higher than that of people at the top.

via Are Your Co-Workers Killing You? | Wired Science | Wired.com.

Money-Driven Protest Taking Shape

Wes Unruh — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 14:14:55 +0000

These bills are showing up everywhere now. And the amazing thing is, the statement above is true. You may recall the recent public discussion about which large corporations have paid no taxes in recent years, largely because of loopholes put in place by Republican legislators. For example, General Electric paid no taxes at all in 2009. Not a small amount. Not a low rate. They literally did not pay a dollar.

via How Will YOU Protest? – Magazine – FOK Society.

‘Jesus loves nukes’: US Air Force taught the Christian Just War Theory – Telegraph

Wes Unruh — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 18:55:01 +0000

Before the the course was stopped 31 nuclear missile launch officers, including Protestants and Roman Catholics, had complained to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a group that campaigns for the separation of church and state.

Its founder Mikey Weinstein said the officers were being told that “under fundamentalist Christian doctrine, war is a good thing”.

He said the officers found that “disgusting.” Mr Weinstein said: “The United States Air Force was promoting a particular brand of right wing fundamentalist Christianity.

via ‘Jesus loves nukes’: US Air Force taught the Christian Just War Theory – Telegraph.

Cyber Weapons: The New Arms Race – BusinessWeek

Wes Unruh — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 14:51:26 +0000

Last year, for example, Google (GOOG) accused China of spying on the company’s workers and customers. It said at the time that at least 20 other companies were victims of the same attack, nicknamed Operation Aurora by the security firm McAfee (INTC). The hacked included Adobe Systems (ADBE), Juniper Networks (JNPR), and Morgan Stanley (MS). Joel F. Brenner, the head of U.S. counterintelligence until 2009, says the same operation that pulled off Aurora has claimed many more victims over several years. “It’d be fair to say that at least 2,000 companies have been hit,” Brenner says. “And that number is on the conservative side.”

Dozens of others, ranging from Lockheed Martin (LMT) and Intel (INTC) to the Indian Defense Ministry, the International Monetary Fund, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, have suffered similar assaults. Earlier this year hackers raided the computer networks of RSA (EMC), a marquee security firm that protects other companies’ computers. They stole some of the most valuable computer code in the world, the algorithms behind RSA’s SecureID tokens, a product used by U.S. government agencies, defense contractors, and major banks to prevent hacking.

via Cyber Weapons: The New Arms Race – BusinessWeek.

Why is the West silent on 5-year cyberwar launched by China?

Wes Unruh — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 14:49:40 +0000

So far the only change in that reluctance is that companies hacked by non-state groups like Anonymous or LulzSec are now willing to admit it after the hactivists post irrefutable evidence of the attacks.

If someone else doesnt publicize an attack, most companies still avoid mentioning them for fear of copycat attacks and damage to their reputations or stock prices.Which is largely irrelevant to the main point that a superpower is waging active, open cyberwar against much of the rest of the world to further its own political ends and the commercial fortunes of companies based there.

Individual corporations – however large – are not equipped to respond to those kinds of attacks.

via Why is the West silent on 5-year cyberwar launched by China? | ITworld.

Astronomers Finally Detect Oxygen Molecules in Space | 80beats | Discover Magazine

Wes Unruh — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 18:27:24 +0000

For the first time, astronomers have found molecular oxygen, which makes up about 20 percent of our air on Earth, in space. Using the large telescope aboard the Herschel Space Observatory, a team of researchers from the European Space Agency and NASA detected the simple molecule in a star-forming region of the Orion Nebula, located about 1,500 light-years from Earth.

via Astronomers Finally Detect Oxygen Molecules in Space | 80beats | Discover Magazine.

HOW TO BUILD A NEWSROOM TIME MACHINE « journoterrorist

Wes Unruh — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 15:53:44 +0000

While archeologists try to recreate what life was like 10,000 years ago, and historians try to recreate what life was like 1,000 years ago, journalists can’t even recreate how they published a newspaper 20 years ago. No one documented the details or saved the old equipment. (I had to buy some of it from creepy old men through Craigslist.)

Journalists may write history’s first draft, but when it comes to covering their own history, they don’t even take notes.

via HOW TO BUILD A NEWSROOM TIME MACHINE « journoterrorist.

Blame Canada!: Disgruntled Canadian Developer Behind Internet Explorer IQ “Study” #Hoax

Wes Unruh — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 22:57:08 +0000

The hoax was perpetuated by an entrepreneur living in Canada named Tarandeep Singh Gill. He’s the founder of a comparison shopping Website called AtCheap.com. In an email with ReadWriteWeb moments before he publicly revealed who he was, he told us that he hoped to lure a few people away from Internet Explorer, but he did not expect it to get the level of coverage that it did.

via Disgruntled Canadian Developer Behind Internet Explorer IQ “Study” Hoax.

Nostradamus predicted the rise of Facebook

Wes Unruh — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 19:44:52 +0000

For each soul their own place forever
Faces will be the book of now
The weak rejoice as demons feed
Henceforth, he will leave his Mark

.. anti-Facebook groups are praising the interpretation, as it appears to portray Mark Zuckerberg as some kind of demon, feeding on the weak.

via Nostradamus predicts the rise of Facebook | The Bovill News Digestive.

Debt Deal Could Spell Doomsday For Many In New York City Area – Cuts To Medicare, MTA, Homeland Security

Wes Unruh — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 22:34:56 +0000

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority could also be hit — big time. It’s counting on $4.2 billion in federal funds for its capital program. Sources say funds for new train cars and buses as well maintenance and rehabilitation of tracks, tunnels, stations and train cars could be on the chopping block.

via Debt Deal Could Spell Doomsday For Many In New York City Area — Cuts To Medicare, MTA, Homeland Security « CBS New York.

Money-Driven Medicine: summary

Wes Unruh — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 18:33:11 +0000

The film interweaves the stories of patients and doctors ensnared in the system with insights by thought-leaders such as Dr. Donald Berwick, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Dr. James Weinstein of Dartmouth and bio-ethicist Dr. Larry Churchill of Vanderbilt. Money-Driven Medicine goes beyond health insurance reform as it lays out the looming policy challenges for the next decade if we are to provide all Americans effective, high quality, patient-centered care while containing costs and reducing wasteful, even risky procedures.

via Money-Driven Medicine: summary.

Raising #PatientSafety Awareness Across the Country | HealthCare.gov

Wes Unruh — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 17:47:08 +0000

Seven years ago, Denver Health took a structured approach to improving quality and safety. By focusing on high opportunity clinical circumstances, Denver Health ranks first, with the lowest ratio of deaths according to the 2010 University Health System Consortiums Quality and Aggregate Score. While this success is encouraging, too many Americans go without quality healthcare: which is where the Partnership for Patients comes in.

via Raising Patient Safety Awareness Across the Country | HealthCare.gov.

Affordable Care Act Grants | HealthCare.gov

Wes Unruh — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 17:44:25 +0000

The Affordable Care Act is making $250 million available over five years to help states transform the way they review health insurance premium increases. This will help hold insurance companies accountable for their proposed rate hikes. via Grants | HealthCare.gov. Related posts: Raising #PatientSafety Awareness Across the Country | HealthCare.gov Gov 2.0 Radio Hot Links [...] Related posts:

games, porting, and snark (on the blue)

Wes Unruh — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:01:12 +0000

Valves strategy for Portal 2. Buy the game once. Play it on whatever fucking platform you want for no extra charge. Download and install the thing as many times and on as many devices as you want.

via Please, for all that is holy… STOP IT. | MetaFilter.

Scientists claim the human brain is at capacity and (it) is too tiring to get smarter

Wes Unruh — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 19:01:06 +0000

The human brain may have reached the limit of its intelligence because it would be too tiring to become even smarter.

A brain accounts for two per cent of the bodys mass but needs 20 per cent of our energy to use, and any increase in brainpower could exhaust us completely, new research claims.

via Full to the brim: Scientists claim the human brain is at capacity and is too tiring to get smarter | Mail Online.

Maajid Nawaz: A global culture to fight extremism | Video on TED.com

Wes Unruh — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 15:51:38 +0000

Why do transnational extremist organizations succeed where democratic movements have a harder time taking hold? Maajid Nawaz, a former Islamist extremist, asks for new grassroots stories and global social activism to spread democracy in the face of nationalism and xenophobia. A powerful talk from TEDGlobal 2011.

via Maajid Nawaz: A global culture to fight extremism | Video on TED.com.

Special report: Goldman’s new money machine: warehouses – Yahoo! News

Wes Unruh — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 00:54:56 +0000

Simply storing all that metal generates tens of millions of dollars in rental revenues for Goldman every year.

There’s just one problem: only a trickle of the aluminum is leaving the depots, creating a supply pinch for manufacturers of everything from soft drink cans to aircraft.

The resulting spike in prices has sparked a clash between companies forced to pay more for their aluminum and wait months for it to be delivered, Goldman, which is keen to keep its cash machines humming and the London Metal Exchange (LME), the world’s benchmark industrial metals market, which critics accuse of lax oversight.

via Special report: Goldman’s new money machine: warehouses – Yahoo! News.

Missouri school district bans ‘biblically contrary’ novels by Kurt Vonnegut and Sarah Ockler

Wes Unruh — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 00:16:17 +0000

The complaint was filed by Republic resident Wesley Scroggins, a professor of management at Missouri State, and author of several outraged letters to his daily newspaper on the moral dry rot of our public-school system. Last year, the Riverfront Times reported on Scroggins’ deep concerns as a parent about the ideas his children are exposed to. His children, by the way, are home-schooled, and therefore not in danger of a teacher forcing them to read any of these books. Still, thought is like a virus, so what if some teenage Denny’s waiter with a public-library card serves a Moon Over My Hammy to a Scroggins child? Next thing you know, the kid’s applying to attend the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. So it goes.

via Missouri school district bans ‘biblically contrary’ novels by Kurt Vonnegut and Sarah Ockler – Kansas City News – Plog.

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Wes Unruh — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 17:18:11 +0000

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Tea Party Violate Property Rights in #OR ⚗ http://bit.ly/ovmnaO

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Wes Unruh — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:43:37 +0000

So much noise to choose from.

Download the entire album – http://t.co/wcjvLdQ #Ikipr Fleeting Touches of the Unknowable #MutantJazz

Ikipr – Fleeting Touches of the Unknowable 2011 « Aleph9 Netlabel http://goo.gl/fb/o54YZ

Check out http://lnkd.in/UpaaBF Fleeting Touches of the Unknowable by Ikipr

Brain bleeding

friendfeed.com/zenwerewolf tracker.. today

Wes Unruh — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:44:00 +0000

security memetics: police chase INSIDE jail
security memetics. Tuesday, July 26, 2011. police chase INSIDE jail. found on boing boing (originally from times union) it seems to me that there really ought to be a better way to catch someone who’s already in jail. at the end, …

HIGH TIMES Medical Marijuana – Spring 2011 | Tips and Tokes

How soon is now? » Blog Archive » Is Gamification The Right, Best …

friendfeed.com/unruh tracker.. today

Wes Unruh — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:33:37 +0000

Sinead O’Connor on Catholic Church Abuse Scandal

listening to “Ikipr – Fleeting Touches of the Unknowable – Disc II (Jachin) – 11 – Were we not infinite” ♫ http://blip.fm/~16dzik
Zen Werewolf

listening to “Ikipr – Fleeting Touches of the Unknowable – Disc II (Jachin) – 11 – Were we not infinite” ♫ http://blip.fm/~16dzik

2 hours ago from Twitter – Comment – Like

Voting in Wisconsin Just Became A Lot More Difficult | MetaFilter

Wes Unruh — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 18:45:03 +0000

One voter this week surreptitiously videoed the process of attempting to get a voter ID for her 18 year old son from the DMV. The potential voter was turned down by clerk after clerk because his bank account did not show enough activity to prove his identity. The clerk couldn’t explain what would happen if a resident was homeless or unemployed.

via Voting in Wisconsin Just Became A Lot More Difficult | MetaFilter.

Tea Party Violate Property Rights in #OR

Wes Unruh — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 17:07:39 +0000

Roseburg Democrats Dean and Sara Byers said Monday they told tea party members who followed that they were not welcome to drive down the lane to their home.

The Byerses said they got out of their car to stop vehicles from entering the driveway and one tea party member almost ran them over.

Sara Byers said she was so shaken she called 911. She said a Douglas County deputy called about an hour and a half later and said he had been unable to respond because of other incidents. Byers said she was still considering filing a criminal complaint against members of the tea party for harassment.

via Political showdown creates conflict in Roseburg park | The News-Review – NRtoday.com.

Burl Cain, the warden of Angola, Louisiana’s largest prison, uses religion to control and subdue the prison population.

Wes Unruh — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:59:42 +0000

When a group of middle school students visited Angola a few years ago, Cain told them that the inmates were there because they “didn’t listen to their parents. They didn’t listen to law enforcement. So when they get here, I become their daddy, and they will either listen to me or make their time here very hard.”

…

Cain’s first execution, he told the Baptist Press, was done strictly by the book. “There was a psshpssh from the machine, and then he was gone,” Cain recalled. “I felt him go to hell as I held his hand. Then the thought came over me: I just killed that man. I said nothing to him about his soul. I didn’t give him a chance to get right with God. What does God think of me? I decided that night I would never again put someone to death without telling him about his soul and about Jesus.”

via God’s Own Warden | MetaFilter.

Ikipr – Fleeting Touches of the Unknowable 2011 « Aleph9 Netlabel

Wes Unruh — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:31:08 +0000

Ambient, Breakbeat, Breakcore, Bricolage, Downtempo, Drum n Bass, electronic, free music, Glitch, IDM, illbient, mp3s, Mutant Jazz, Noise

Disc I (Boaz):
01.Infilitrate
02.Operating: Shadow Mode
03.Chipping Bones at the Terrible Fountain
04.Drop an Apple by Edgar Cage (Ikipr Cover)
05.Shattered Sparks
06.I am Standing over there
07.Virgin in the Dragon’s Stomach
08.Electric Blue DataSea
09.Orbits
10.Espionage & DOR-Bombs
11.The Sun is Setting

Disc II (Jachin):
01.Book Infinite
02.You are not alone (Thy Starry Lamps glow in the Sky)
03.DCV5VC
04.Omega (with LVX1313 – 3rd Version)
05.Mercurius
06.This body hollow
07.Bismuth
08.Trembling Beneath the Stars
09.Skylabs
10.Fingers Falter
11.Were we not infinite, the end of days would come with great terror

via Ikipr – Fleeting Touches of the Unknowable 2011 « Aleph9 Netlabel.

friendfeed.com/unruh tracker.. today

Wes Unruh — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 21:53:07 +0000

Drug trafficking for ‘justice’ in Mexico – Americas – Al Jazeera English http://aje.me/qVa1np
Zen Werewolf

Drug trafficking for ‘justice’ in Mexico – Americas – Al Jazeera English http://aje.me/qVa1np

1 hour ago from Twitter – Comment – Like

Anti-Muslim Bloggers Say They Are The Real Victims of Norway Attacks

friendfeed.com/zenwerewolf tracker.. today

Wes Unruh — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 21:16:52 +0000

Cannabis Oil Fights Cancer – 420 Magazine

Names Banished Beneath the Sea – On Revenant Returns, and Fears of Adversarial Immortality

Social Network Theory – Benefits Of Social Networking | Julie K …

security memetics: Y U NO USE ENCRYPTION
security memetics. Monday, July 25, 2011. Y U NO USE ENCRYPTION. from here while sony was a prime example of this, it seems to happen with almost every company we hear about getting breached – they all seem to have unencrypted sensitive …

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Wes Unruh — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 19:16:37 +0000

Monks With Guns: Discovering Buddhist Violence | Religion Dispatches ⚗ http://bit.ly/ovaRD2

An X-Linked Haplotype of Neandertal Origin Is Present Among All Non-African Populations ⚗ http://bit.ly/r0M0tz

The Book of Genesis | ELETE ⚗ http://bit.ly/pnfH8t

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Wes Unruh — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 19:16:37 +0000

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Wes Unruh — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 19:16:37 +0000

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Wes Unruh — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 19:16:37 +0000

Monks With Guns: Discovering Buddhist Violence | Religion Dispatches

Wes Unruh — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 19:16:36 +0000

Monks talked about the guns they had bought and now kept at their bedsides. Others spoke heatedly about the violent militant attacks on Buddhist civilians and monasteries. Although the cause of the violence is multilayered—owing much to corruption, drug trade, and corporatization—many monks also felt Islam was to blame. In their minds, the conflict was anchored to the larger discussion of religious violence: Muslims against Buddhists.

One day after teaching an English class for Buddhist novices at a monastery a young monk came over and pulled back the folds of his robe to reveal a Smith & Wesson.

via Monks With Guns: Discovering Buddhist Violence | Religion Dispatches.

An X-Linked Haplotype of Neandertal Origin Is Present Among All Non-African Populations

Wes Unruh — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:31:16 +0000

Recent work on the Neandertal genome has raised the possibility of admixture between Neandertals and the expanding population of Homo sapiens who left Africa between 80 and 50 Kya thousand years ago to colonize the rest of the world. Here, we provide evidence of a notable presence 9% overall of a Neandertal-derived X chromosome segment among all contemporary human populations outside Africa. Our analysis of 6,092 X-chromosomes from all inhabited continents supports earlier contentions that a mosaic of lineages of different time depths and different geographic provenance could have contributed to the genetic constitution of modern humans. It indicates a very early admixture between expanding African migrants and Neandertals prior to or very early on the route of the out-of-Africa expansion that led to the successful colonization of the planet.

via An X-Linked Haplotype of Neandertal Origin Is Present Among All Non-African Populations.

The Book of Genesis | ELETE

Wes Unruh — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:25:07 +0000

The Book of Genesis by ELETE

“and first came a human
and then came a mind
then there was a concept
and then a design
and then came a shelter
and fire was found
and then came the weapons
that would turn it around”

via The Book of Genesis | ELETE.

friendfeed.com/zenwerewolf tracker.. today

Wes Unruh — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 23:26:58 +0000

Metamorphosis Blues by Bruce Taylor « Bizarro Central

Huge UFO pyramid over China jan 2010 | Marijuana Crimes

Brids of a Feather and the Playthings of the 12/ Part 4

friendfeed.com/zenwerewolf tracker.. today

Wes Unruh — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 23:26:58 +0000

Metamorphosis Blues by Bruce Taylor « Bizarro Central

Huge UFO pyramid over China jan 2010 | Marijuana Crimes

Brids of a Feather and the Playthings of the 12/ Part 4

friendfeed.com/unruh tracker.. today

Wes Unruh — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 23:26:58 +0000

Metamorphosis Blues by Bruce Taylor « Bizarro Central
Zen Werewolf

Metamorphosis Blues by Bruce Taylor « Bizarro Central – http://bizarrocentral.com/2011...

1 hour ago from “edge of tomorrow” – Google… – Comment – Like

solipsistic NATION: Excursions in Ambience

Today’s show is very special for me and I imagine it will be a very special show for a lot of people, because today we’ll be talking with Brian Long and showcasing music from the Excursions in Ambience compilation album series. Back in the early 1990s when I was first falling deeply in love with [...]