LVX23

I rode up into Henry Cowell State Park today. It's practically across the street from my house so I ride there a lot. The lowest part of the park wraps around the San Lorenzo river, lined with tall redwoods and thick fern beds. As you ascend up through the hills the dense forest gradually yields to madrone & manzanita & oaks, the wet dirt of the woods becoming loose white sand broken from the sandstone. Up on top it starts getting hot this time of year but the view over the park and out to sea is fantastic.

One of the power spots I like to ride to is this tall skeleton of a pine tree, which I call the Ghost Tree, for reasons which are hopefully apparent from the pics. It's a powerful old husk, far taller than anything else up there, frozen in time like a whisp of smoke from a forgotten past or a dessicated wand whose final spell was it's own passing. Why it hasn't fallen is beyond me. It's dead roots must run deep into those hills, reaching down below the sandstone into the red earth like the thin white fingers of an aged old wizard, straining to hold the wild blood of Life.

Today three hawks circled near the tree, held aloft by the warm currents rising from the sunburnt sand.

I would be remiss in my duties as an avid Simpsons fan by not mentioning this article by Gerry Bowler called, God and The Simpsons: The Spirituality of Springfield. I should admit that for a long time I held fast to the notion that the creation of television was an evolutionary tactic designed solely to deliver The Simpsons to humanity.

Some excerpts:

On The Simpsons, God, the Devil, Heaven, Hell and angels are all treated as having objective reality. Homer, in fact, meets God. He and the Creator of the Universe discuss Homer's decision to stay home from church and God admits that he himself is not a big fan of sermons or of Reverend Lovejoy, to whom he thinks he will give a canker sore. Later, when Homer has agreed to go back to church and he falls asleep in the pew, he has another vision of God. Homer asks him the meaning of life, and God reveals that he knows old jokes:

God: Homer, I can't tell you that. You'll find out when you die.
Homer: I can't wait that long!
God: You can't wait six months?

Homer and Bart both have encounters with the devil as well. After a traffic accident, Bart starts on his way to Heaven but, because he did not hold on to the handrail of the escalator taking him to the Pearly Gates, and because he spat over the edge, he is sent to Hell. Satan, however, has to tell him that a mistake has been made:

Devil: Boy, is my face red... According to this you're not due to arrive until the Yankees win the pennant. That's nearly a century from now.
Bart: Say, is there anything I can do to avoid coming back here?
Devil: Oh, sure, yeah, But you wouldn't like it.
Bart: Oh, OK. See you later then.
Devil: Remember! Lie, cheat, steal and listen to heavy metal music!
Bart: Yessir!

In an episode which features the family falling asleep in church during the Easter service and dreaming their own Bible stories, Marge awakes to find that the end of the world has arrived. She watches the Flanders family being lofted toward eternal bliss while an opening to Hell appears for the Simpsons. She wonders, “Why aren't we ascending into heaven?” and concludes sadly, “Oh, right. The sins.”

To paraphrase J.R.R. Tolkien, the internal combustion engine is the greatest evil ever wrought upon earth.

EPA: Pipeline Caused Calif. Diesel Spill

SAN FRANCISCO - A broken pipeline has spilled as much as 1 million gallons of diesel fuel into Suisun Bay, which feeds into San Francisco Bay.

The petroleum pipeline owned by Kinder-Morgan ruptured Wednesday and spilled the fuel into wetlands around Suisun Bay, said March Merchant, a spokesman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Emergency response teams are trying to clean up as much of the spill as possible in the area about 25 miles northeast of San Francisco.

From a recent Salon article about current Supreme Court hearings over the appeal of the BushCo to detain foreign and domestic "suspects" indefinitely and without trial:

Having government agents sweep U.S. citizens off the streets and into prison cells, holding them incommunicado for as long as the government likes -- it sounds like a dark fantasy of life in a totalitarian state, the kind of thing we're supposed to be fighting against in Iraq. But this is no fantasy. In the cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, the Bush administration is advancing a vision of governmental power that is both far-reaching and unprecedented, at least in the United States of America. And it is a vision -- like the one the administration articulated Tuesday during Supreme Court arguments on the secrecy of Vice President Cheney's energy task force -- that leaves sole discretion, sole authority, and almost unfettered power in the hands of the executive branch.

TheModernWorld.com presents a cool illustrated chapter-by-chapter synopsis of Thomas Pynchon's epic novel, Gravity's Rainbow. This is one of those books, along with Joyce's Ulysses, that I swear to myself I will someday read in its entirety. Vastly commented upon and highly influential to many of the writers and thinkers I admire, there are some novels which, sadly, are just too damn difficult to wade through without a steely resolve some serious vacation time (Pynchon has vast chunks of his text in German! Do I just skip these parts and assume that they're ancillary to the main text?)

[Thanks to Easy Bake Coven for the link.]

Just ran across this amazing bit on The Memory Hole showing how photo editors at the London Evening Standard seem to have manipulated a front-page image supposedly showing a large crowd of exultant Iraqis jubilantly celebrating the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Exposed and dissected by Simon Moore, The Memory Hole reproduces his work including detailed annotations of people and bits of crowd scene which where copied and pasted, including the apparent collaging of two separate images featuring the same man in different poses.

Unbelievable. But a fact of life in a time when information is digital and malleable, and when imagination and reality are growing more and more blurred by our ability to create simulacra. Was there really such a large crowd? Was Saddam really captured? Can we believe the images we see in the media? What about courtroom evidence? A time is perhaps soon on the horizon when belief may be a thing of the past.

Sky High : A Bulgarian boy somersaults as others look at him on the Black sea coast in the biggest sea resort of Varna, some 450 kms north-east from the capital Sofia, just a month before the tourist season in the city. (AFP/Stringer )

Allah nathrak... ooths val spethod...

Vote Kerry

AP News reports on the recent development of a potentially-injectible molecular-scale biocomputer composed of DNA and enzymes, further blurring the lines between science fiction and reality.

The molecular-scale device, which is essentially a liquid mixture of synthetic DNA and enzymes, is designed to sniff out chemical signs of disease and pump out drugs in response.

Molecular computers have only been around for a decade. Instead of micro chips and processors, they harness the software-like ability of DNA strands to store information. Enzymes "read" chemical sequences on the DNA in a way that allows the computer to perform calculations.

Experts say such computers could become extremely powerful, given DNA's potential to store huge amounts of information. The computing power of 1 trillion compact discs could be stored in less than an ounce of dried DNA.

"It's really an ingenious concept," Reif said of Shapiro's computer. "This could have a major significance in the medical world, if only they could get it in the cell."

In the future, a doctor might inject trillions of the devices into a patient. The computer is designed to detect cancer by monitoring concentrations of certain molecules. If cancer is detected, the computer releases other molecules that interfere with a cancer cell's activities and cause it to self-destruct.

Unlike many of its predecessors, the computer is autonomous -- it doesn't need supervision or added chemicals to make it work.

Shapiro, who received a U.S. patent for a previous version in 2001, said the new computer worked fine detecting chemical markers of lung and prostate cancer in lab experiments using a pristine water solution.

But it could get confused if it were put in a medium teeming with other molecules, Shapiro said. "There could be many reactions with many other molecules that may be detrimental to either the computer or to the cell in which it operates."

Microvision is developing a system that uses a wireless computer and a laser monocle to project images directly onto the retina. This allows users to have a head's-up display overlaid on their field of vision.

It could allow surgeons to get a bird's eye view of the innards of a patient, offer military units in the field a view of the entire battlefield and provide mechanics with a simulation of the inside of a car's engine.

"I was amazed by what I saw," said Harry Goldstein, senior associate editor of IEEE Spectrum.

"Seeing is believing and seeing these images floating in front of you at about arms length distance is pretty incredible."

"Reality can be enriched by having more detailed information about what you see."

There is still work to be done but potentially the system could become second only to tapping into the optic nerve in terms of getting images to the brain.

It could provide three dimensional pictures in perfect colour, able to simulate near or distant objects with complete realism, which could provide gamers with an intense sense of reality.

[From this page of excellent photos, including several of Burning Man. Kudos to the photographer who seems to be anonymous.]

Here's an excerpt from a paper I'm working on called Metaprogramming the Self:

The metaprogrammer aims ultimately to effect external change from within, in a sort of meta-metaprogram. Suffice it to say that the magick practiced by an individual does not occur in a vacuum, and the assumed lines of boundary between us and everything else are mere illusion. In a vast field of electromagnetic waves with far more space than matter our flesh is only slightly denser than the air we breathe. The fields of the self & its brain are not confined to the skull and, when focused & amplified by the appropriate set of conditions, can influence the dynamic interference pattern that is existence. Like the macroscopic butterfly effect providing the initial impulse at just the right time to be swept along and iterated into the cyclone, focused ritual can have subtly profound influences on the fields of life and consciousness. In this way the metaprogrammer wields a power of potentially great magnitude and is thus not only responsible for themselves but for the entire web of life.

Human consciousness is the product of evolution and the form it has now is very different from that of 200, 1000, or 50000 years ago. Our minds, our language, and the technologies we produce are intimately bound to one another, progressing in a continual feedback loop as each empowers and limits the other. In the modern age we have seen the mechanism and duality of Descartes and Newton supplanted by relativism and quantum uncertainty. We have broken open the atomic nucleus and harnessed the primal powers within to assemble molecules and destroy nations. We have established a planetary network of communication and information, a digital hive mind archiving culture and extending technology through the global brain. And in making information digital we have produced a simulacrum of reality entirely convincing yet entirely malleable, much like the linguistic maps of belief woven within our minds. When it is impossible to tell the real image from the manufactured image, when the fantasy of myth is brought to life in digital cinema, when computer technology can synthesize anything, then the lines between the real and imagined have grown very thin indeed. Slowly, the human mind and its culture are inexorably drawing nearer and nearer to a time when imagination is as real as anything else and belief is a faint vestige of the past.

The shaman, the psychonaut, and the metaprogrammer have intuited this inevitability and are setting themselves ahead of the curve. They engage imagination and invoke it into being, shaping mind and matter in the image of heaven. The central goal of the western magickal paradigm is to unite spirit and matter, the macrocosm and the microcosm; to reveal the kingdom of heaven on Earth. We are becoming the gods and goddesses of antiquity, poised on the edge of time, a breath away from hyperspace.

A few supernatural news items:

'Strange force' plays mind games with family

Cindy Crowe, said that although she always had a feeling something was in the house, she was not convinced until the strange happenings began. She said [daughter] Keisha had largely been targeted by the invisible force.

'We are now convinced there is some invisible force in that house'
"Just the other day my daughter found her bed on fire. Before that, she entered her bedroom to see the curtains ablaze. Once, when Keisha was sitting on the sofa, it burst into flames," said Crowe.

She said an entire room in their home had caught alight and everything in it was ruined.

"We are now convinced there is some invisible force in that house and we are not going back," said Crowe.

Walking with the dead

"Before I bought this pub about two years ago, I was a non believer. I don't believe in God or ghosts - when you're dead you're dead. We're just big bags of water that's all."
These are the unlikely words of Adam Franklin..

Brendan Riley, along with other witnesses, saw a glowing ping-ball-sized orb of light - traditionally an indication of paranormal activity - flash past him.

"About three weeks after we arrived, it was two in the morning, I was standing by the bar after everyone else had gone home," said the 32-year-old ex-RAF man from Ellesmere Port."This bloke appeared and walked across the room right in front of me. As he walked past, he kept glaring at me intently until he disappeared."

Martyn Jones and Brendan McAleer are two of the barmen who regularly see and hear the spooks. Like Adam, neither is keen to be on their own for lock-up.


Says Brendan: "After everyone else has gone I've been here in the bar with a pint of Guinness and you can hear the toilet doors downstairs opening and shutting, opening and shutting, and you know there's no-one down there.

Others are afraid to stay the night in the green room upstairs which female comic Janey Godley claims has two ghostly inhabitants. She is also petrified of the cellar stairs adjacent to the toilets. She claims there's something evil there.

Martyn Jones and Brendan McAleer are two of the barmen who regularly see and hear the spooks. Like Adam, neither is keen to be on their own for lock-up.

Says Brendan: "After everyone else has gone I've been here in the bar with a pint of Guinness and you can hear the toilet doors downstairs opening and shutting, opening and shutting, and you know there's no-one down there.

[Ghostbuster] Billy says: "If you go into an old house, sometimes you can get a lovely warm feeling. That's because of the people who lived there. They impregnate the psychic structure of the house and that becomes the representation of those people.

"And it can work the other way whereby an evil or unhappy family who've lived there will influence the minds of the people who subsequently come along."

People dance during a rave party at Skolbeat Festival at Sambodrome, in Sao Paulo, April 24, 2004. More than 30,000 people take part in the Skolbeat Festival, with 57 DJ's playing techno music during all night in five stages. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker

A growing number of legislators across the country are questioning the reliability of touch-screen e-vote machines, according to a recent AP article. With ongoing crashes, security holes, and no back-up record of votes, people are beginning to realize that the machines cannot be trusted to manage the upcoming presidential election.

On Thursday, a key California panel unanimously recommended banning a popular Diebold Inc. paperless touchscreen model — a move that could force Diebold and other manufacturers to overhaul their business practices nationwide. Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, who said Diebold glitches "jeopardized the outcome" of the March 2 primary, has until April 30 to decide whether to decertify Diebold and possibly other touchscreen terminals in California.

The head of a newly created federal agency charged with overseeing electronic voting called Diebold's problems "deeply troubling."

Indeed, allowing a private company - and one's who's CEO is a strong GOP backer - to handle our votes seems a bit foolish. Accordingly many are calling for an open-source voting system.

"Open source is the only way to build robust systems that people can believe in," said Ed Cherlin, a Silicon Valley engineer with the nonprofit Open Voting Consortium.

The consortium's prototype relies on familiar desktop PCs and produces paper versions of every ballot cast, which can be reviewed by voters at the polls and then stored in county lock boxes. The operating system is Linux (news - web sites) — not Microsoft Windows, which most voting terminals rely on.

"Electronic voting in its current form is like hiring a private company to count votes behind closed doors," said Stanford University professor David Dill, who publishes a Web site called Verified Voting.

Wired has a similar article noting that California's Voting Systems and Procedures Panel has recommended that the state attorney general investigate claims that Diebold has violated state election laws by installing uncertified software on its voting systems.

Ice cream moguls Ben & Jerry's have funded Penn State acousticians to develope an eco-friendly refrigerator which uses sound waves instead of CFC refrigerants.

.The Penn State thermoacoustic chiller uses helium gas instead of chemical refrigerants. Helium, which is used to keep birthday party balloons aloft, doesn't burn, explode or combine with other chemicals. If released into the atmosphere, helium drifts harmlessly into outer space.

The Penn State chiller takes advantage of helium's inertness and high thermal conductivity as well as the fact that a sound wave is a rapid succession of compressions and expansions of the gas that carries it.

"When a gas is compressed, its heats up. When it expands, it cools down," Garrett explains. "In thermoacoustics, we arrange the compressions and expansions so that all of the heat of compression is deposited at one end of the system where it can be exhausted into the room. We arrange for all of the expansions to occur at a different location where the cooling due to expansion can be used to refrigerate ice cream, for example. Our compact unit also makes this happen with no mechanical valves or cams or linkages."

Researchers at USC and NASA Ames have developed a molecular memory device which they say could offer 40GB of storage per square centimeter - far greater than silicon and much cheaper.

According to a recent paper by Zhou and his group in Applied Physics Letters describing the technology, the density is achieved by the nanoscale (one millionth of a millimeter) size of the building blocks used,

The USC/Ames system is still more compact because each memory cell can hold not just one bit of data but three, by virtue of having 8 separate, stable identifiable electronic states.

The USC/Ames system is already quite stable, holding information up to 600 hours. "We believe further work can increase the stability still further," the scientist said.



Memory on a nanowire: Simulation of memory cells holding 3 bits of data each formed spontaneously on an indium oxide nanowire by a process created at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the NASA Ames Research Center. (Image courtesy University Of Southern California)

Tourists make their way up to the largest bronze Buddah in the world on Lantau island. Canadian mules will do the heavy lifting for a new cable car construction project on the island.(AFP/File/Peter Parks)



Tamale vendor Carlos Constantino Machuca is taken away by police after police discovered a carved-up body in his home in the city of Morelia, western Mexico late Tuesday April 20, 2004. The vendor, who sold tamales from a cart denied using human flesh in his food. Police entered the home and found body parts, some of which appeared to have been boiled with herbs. It has not been confirmed if there was human flesh in his tamales.(AP Photo/Martin Espinoza-La Voz de Michoacan)



President Bush delivers his remarks on the Patriot Act in Buffalo, N.Y., Tuesday, April 20, 2004. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

"Half of the people you meet do indeed seem dumber than a box of rocks; but they did not start out that way. Parents, peers, schools, churches, advertisers and jobs made them that way. Every baby at birth has a relentlessly curious and experimental temperament. It takes the first third of our lives to destroy that curiosity and experimentalism; but in most cases, we become placid parts of a docile herd.

This human herd all started out as potential geniuses, before the tacit conspiracy of social conformity blighted their brains. All of them can redeem that lost freedom, if they work at it hard enough."

-- Robert Anton Wilson

The Tri-Valley Herald has a report that e-vote machine makers, Diebold, have publicly acknowledged security flaws in their machines. Furthermore, they admit that these flaws disenfranchised California voters in the March presidential primaries. It is likely that California elections regulators will recommend to decertify Diebold machines.

Diebold Election Services Inc. president Bob Urosevich... apologized "for any embarrassment."

"We were caught. We apologize for that," Urosevich said of the mass failures of devices needed to call up digital ballots.

"We're sorry for the inconvenience of the voters," Urosevich said.

"Weren't they actually disenfranchised?" asked Tony Miller, chief counsel to the state's elections division.

After a moment, Urosevich agreed: "Yes, sir."

Aside from security concerns Diebold machines offer no independent vote record for recounts.

"It is apparent from your responses that no such backup plan has been created and that you continue to 'fly by the seat of your pants,'" [Undersecretary of State Mark] Kyle wrote on Feb. 8. "In view of the chaos your company has caused, we expected that your company would 'step up to the plate' with an aggressive backup plan. Your failure to do so raises grave questions about your suitability as a voting systems vendor."

"I understand your frustration," said Diebold chief developer Tab Iredell. "Why did we sell something that we didn't think we could run? Our understanding based on past experience was we thought we could get that certified."

Thanks to FutureHi.com for pointing out this amazing home that runs entirely on solar hydrogen. The future's so bright I gotta wear, um... shades.

The eco-house relies on a photovoltaic (PV) hydrogen production and storage system to power household appliances and a fuel cell that can convert the chemical energy into electricity.

“Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the atmosphere. I believe it is the fuel of the future,” said Kamaruzzaman. “People tend to equate hydrogen with hydrogen bombs, but in fact, it is really quite safe because it is so light that it disappears into the atmosphere as soon as it is released.”

The system uses solar power to convert ionised water into hydrogen through the process of electrolysis. Forty-two multi-crystal PV panels which can produce a total peak power of 5kWp are mounted on the rooftop. When sunlight hits the PV panels, the solar energy is converted into electricity, which is then used to run an electrolyser unit inside the house.

The electrolyser has a capacity of 0.54cu.m per hour of hydrogen production, and is used to transform electrical energy from the PV panels into chemical energy in the form of hydrogen.

It then electrolyses purified water supplied by a water purification system, producing hydrogen and oxygen which are then vented into the atmosphere. A hydrogen gas purifier then purifies the hydrogen before storing it in a 1,500-litre vertical-standing storage tank outside the house. This hydrogen is then used to run a fuel cell, cooking stove, and boiler for the absorption air-conditioning system.

The storage tank is equipped with a gas management system to ensure safety. Meanwhile, the PV system is interconnected to the utility power grid, with a reversible current flow and controlled by a 5kW solar PV inverter.

Speaking of things that could potentially save or destroy the planet, nanotech wizard Eric Drexler has his own web site now at e-drexler.com. From the intro:

This site focuses on the science behind emerging technologies of broad importance, summarizing research results and offering technical perspectives on research directions. It includes tutorial material, new results, annotated bibliographies and links to external web resources. Initial topics include nanotechnology-based production systems (central to the future of physical technology), and secure, distributed computing (central to the future of informational technology). In both these areas, several widespread assumptions are very wrong. A better understanding can benefit both technical leaders seeking productive directions for research and development, and policy makers aiming to make wise decisions.

Today is international Earth Day, in spite of everything the current U.S. administration and it's corporate puppet masters are doing to pillage & plunder our home. We are part of the planet, we are inhabitants embedded in the ecosystem, affecting and affected by our environment. The Earth is not profane, not a stop on the way to some heavenly reward. It is absolutely holy and miraculous, nourishing and aware. If nothing else, understand that we are still animals in nature, driven by eons of ape politics & quelled instinct, struggling to come to terms with our self-awareness and our unique ability to enact our will upon the world and each other. Like adolescents we create and we destroy simply because we can. Our vast powers are still unrestrained by responsibility and the awareness that we are all part of the dynamic ecology of Life on Earth.

The AP reports that Frank Morosky and his company Flat-D Innovations have finally solved the age-old problem of dog flatulence. They've created a diaper lined with charcoal. Originally intended for humans, the team has expanded their offerings in response to customer requests.

Morosky has developed two versions that will go on sale later this month. One, similar to a G-string, will sell for about $20. The other, a denim diaper with a detachable charcoal pad inside, will sell for about $50.

Veterinarian David Graeff of Animal Care Hospital, said flatulence is common in dogs, but is not a medical problem.

Graeff said pet owners often jokingly blame their own flatulence on their pets.

"Unfortunately," he said, "the dogs do get blamed for this, no matter what."

I had to dust off this old chestnut... Bush getting bucked by an ornery Segway.

There's a large book by John Eccles & Karl Popper called The Self & It's Brain in which the two esteemed neuroscientists present a battery of philosophical theory coupled with intense neurological research in order to demonstrate their learned opinion about how the mind coordinates its brain. They imagine the self as a sort of detached wave which interprets and organizes the myriad of data churned out by the various bodies of the cortex - a controller and integrator of thought & emotion, memory & mood. When I read the following excerpt it was as if I suddenly felt my mind as a distinct entity coordinating all the data streaming in from my sensorium, reading the diverse & complex electrochemical & magentic fields generated by my cortex and translating them into the linguistic shell it uses to evaluate & catalog experience. In this context language is thus a translational layer between the matter of the brain and the subtle aether of mind employed by the discarnate self as it steers the ship of the human organism through the sea of life.

Here's the excerpt from the text:

Briefly, the hypothesis is that the self-conscious mind is an independent entity that is actively engaged in reading out from the multitude of active centres in the modules of the liaison areas of the dominant cerebral hemisphere. The self-conscious mind selects from these centres in accord with its attention and its interests and integrates its selections to give the unity of conscious experience from moment to moment. It also acts back on the neural centres. Thus it is proposed that the self-conscious mind excercises a superior interpretive and controlling role upon neural events by virtue of a two-way interaction across the interface between World 1 [the material world] and World 2 [the world of mental states]. It is proposed that the unity of conscious experience comes not from an ultimate synthesis in the neural machinery but in the integrating action of the self-conscious mind on what it reads out from the immense diversity of neural activities in the liaison brain. [italics added]

The question remains regarding the nature & origin of this mind. Is it an epiphenomenon of the brain, the product of an incomprehensibly convoluted associative network of 100 billion neurons? An abstraction manifest within the hyperdimensional manifold of interfering and cohering EM waves washing over the neurochemical stew of the cortex? Or perhaps it originates elsewhere, in the uncharted plenum of supra-consciousness, a vast singular pool of Soul out of which individual consciousness emerges and seeks out the vehicle of a unique human brain, through which it can experience Creation as manifest in duality through the unique genetic eyes of its host...

Enigmatic street artist Banksy has struck again, sneaking his work into a London museum.

A graffiti artist called Banksy smuggled his latest work, a dead rat in a glass-fronted box, into the Natural History Museum in London, where it was exhibited on a wall for several hours.

Staff did not notice that the rat was out of place amid the museum's usual fare of dinosaur bones and artefacts from the animal kingdom.

The rat was stuffed and clad in scaled-down wraparound sunglasses, and had a rucksack on its back and a microphone in one paw. A miniature spraycan sat at its feet, while above it was sprayed in graffiti-style lettering "our time will come".

The piece, called Banksus Militus Ratus, was displayed with a text that said the common sewer rat had some remarkable new characteristics.

"Attributed to an increase in junk food waste, ambient radiation and hardcore urban rap music these creatures have evolved at an unprecedented rate." It quotes a bogus university professor as saying: "You can laugh now . . . but one day they may be in charge."

Last year Banksy, real name Robert Banks, said not getting caught was part of the buzz.

"The art to it is not getting picked up for it, and that's the biggest buzz at the end of the day because you could stick all my shit in the Tate Modern and have an opening with Tony Blair and Kate Moss on Rollerblades handing out vol-au-vents and it wouldn't be as exciting."

[Thanks to Sauceruny for the tip.]

The Comoro black flying fox, shown in this undated photo, is a fruit bat found only on the Indian Ocean's Comoros islands. Hundreds of imperiled species around the world, including the Comoro, lack protection from human encroachment despite the vast amount of land set aside for conservation, a new study warns. (AP Photo/Durrell Wildlife Conservation, J.Morgan)

"...Sometimes we look like assholes and sometimes we look like spoiled rock stars - but we also look like human beings."

--Metallica guitarist KIRK HAMMETT, on an upcoming feature documentary showcasing the hard rock band's recent struggles, in Guitar World magazine.

Hackers have changed the names of political parties on the website for the Indonesian General Election Commision, altering the posted results of the election.

...the United Development Party (PPP) of Vice President Hamzah Haz, whose party color is Islam's green, became the "Pink Grandfather Party"... the Democrats' Party became "the Party of Bottled Mineral Water", in an apparent reference to its saleability. The People's Mandate Party, in sixth, became the "Party that must repair its website first", while 13 others were just changed to "Pink Party", regardless of their party colors. The Crescent and Star Party was named after a singing bird, the Freedom Party took the name of a character in a popular television series, and the New Indonesian Association Party became "Party of Midwives", for no apparent reason.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard has been cursed by aborigines.

Aborigines believe that to point a kangaroo bone at someone is to bring that person ill fortune, and the black magic is strong enough to cause death.

An aboriginal woman dressed in possum skin and traditional tribal makeup confronted Howard on Tuesday after he made a speech in a rural town and pointed a one-inch bone at the politician to place a silent curse on him.

"This curse could go two ways, it could enlighten him and lift a mental block that Mr. Howard has about indigenous Australians," Aborigine Geoff Clark told reporters.

"Mr. Howard can refuse to ignore the message at his own peril and be put under a curse up until the next federal election."

Here's an ever-expanding list of synchronous 23's and the Law of Fives. [Thanks to Presurfer.com.]

Scientists have found more evidence for the abilities of curcumin - the ingredient which makes a curry a curry - in preventing neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

Research conducted in the Pharmacy department by postgraduate student Sheril Daniel under the supervision of Prof Santy Daya and Dr Janice Limson of Rhodes University in South Africa suggests that curcumin may have additional benefits previously unknown.

Daniel conducted experiments in rats which showed that curcumin is able to protect the brain against oxidative damage induced by cyanide, quinolinic acid and toxic metals such as lead and cadmium. These toxins are all capable of causing intensive oxidative damage to the brain. Oxidative damage has been implicated in various neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

The hippocampus, a region of the brain, is linked to vital behaviour and intellectual activities and is known to be a primary target for neuronal degeneration in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease. Lead has been shown to disrupt structural features of the cells in this region of the brain, leading to various problems including loss of memory and of learning skills. 

Daniel's studies showed that curcumin significantly protected the hippocampal cells that were treated with the toxic metal, lead. It is believed that the anti-inflammatory property of curcumin contributed to the reduced amount of swelling observed within neuronal cells.

Researchers at Purdue University have presented evidence supporting desktop cold fusion using sonofusion and deuterated acetone to produce tritium and gamma rays. The discovery brings the scientific world closer to realizing the elusive goal of true cold fusion.

"What we are doing, in effect, is producing nuclear emissions in a simple desktop apparatus," said Rusi Taleyarkhan, the principal investigator and a professor of nuclear engineer at Purdue University. "That really is the magnitude of the discovery - the ability to use simple mechanical force for the first time in history to initiate conditions comparable to the interior of stars."

The next step is to scale the syetem up and see if they can cross the break-even point where the energy produced by the system is greater than the energy used.

About 1000 Iowa State students joined poilce for a good ol' fashioned riot at this year's annual VEISHEA celebration. The college event has a history of rowdiness and violence but reports say this, the 13th year, has been the worst.

In my experience the riots always start about 5 minutes after the riot cops show up. Nothing sours the mood of a good street party like 30 or 40 cops. It's like everyone looks at the cops and thinks, "Oh, I guess we're supposed to riot now."

Police say the problems started when they went in to crack down on a party in the 2600 block of Hunt Street, which is on the edge of campus town.

Officers said when they arrived, several hundred people were in the area and were overflowing into the street.

Police said the crowd started throwing bottles and cans at the officers and at their vehicles. Then, police said some people began yelling and chanting "Riot, Riot."

You can see a raw video feed of the riot here. Note the now-cliched but always entertaining "flipping of the cop car by drunken jocks".

This photograph was taken by the crew on board the Columbia during its last mission, on a cloudless day. The picture is of Europe and Africa when the sun is setting. Half of the picture is in night. The bright dots you see are the cities lights. The top part of Africa is the Sahara Desert. Note that the lights are already on in Holland, Paris, and Barcelona, and that's it's still daylight in Dublin, London, Lisbon, and Madrid. The sun is still shining on the Strait of Gibraltar. The Mediterranean Sea is already in darkness. In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean you can see the Azores Islands; below them to the right are the Madeira Islands; a bit below are the Canary Islands; and further South, close to the farthest western point of Africa, are the Cape Verde islands. Note that the Sahara is huge and can be seen clearly both during Daytime and night time. To the left, on top, is Greenland, totally frozen.

Here are some quotes from the introduction to Daniel Pinchbeck's excellent psychedelic autobiography, Breaking Open The Head:

Antidepressants fit our society's underlying biases. Psychedelics emphatically, do not. Is it possible that we have demonized hallucinogens because we fear the contents of our own minds?

"I sometimes wonder if our culture, acting in the manner of a single organism - in the way a crowd of people or a classroom of students sometimes can - somehow senses a deep threat to its own philosophical foundations residing in the psychedelic experience. This might help account for the otherwise irrational hatred and repression of the use of hallucinogens, and the smirking dismissal of the psychedelic experience as a trivial one by so many of our intellectuals." - Paul Devereux, The Long Trip

"People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls." - Carl Jung

Tifareth.com offers several shareware radionics and telehypnosis programs for the PC. They also have an app called the Chaos Magick Spell Caster. I haven't tried any of the apps and, frankly, I'm not sure how I feel about having an automated computer program sending hypnotic waves to unsuspecting marks. In general, this sort of left-hand path magick makes me a bit wary. The whole thing strikes me as a bit of pandering to the gullible masses, but that's not to say there isn't potential value in these programs.

From the Tele Hypnosis description:

Tele Hypnosis 1.0- An advanced radionic program which you can control the mind of others. With Tele Hypnosis you can oblige the people to make the things you wish. You can make someone loves you passionately. You can get the best of your children and make them study more and control their behaviour. You can influence your boss to choose you for a promotion. Also, using your own photo, you may use the program for auto hypnosis purposes. These and too many more things you will be able to do using Tele Hypnosis.

From Awakening Osiris: The Egyptian Book of the Dead, translated by Normandi Ellis:

Chapter 53: The Heart of Carnelian

Mine is a heart of carnelian, crimson as murder on a holy day. Mine is a heart of cornel, the gnarled roots of dogwood and the bursting of flowers. I am the broken wax seal on my lover's letters. I am the red quartz in the deepest of mines. I am the phoenix, the fiery sun, consuming and resuming myself. I pace the halls of the underworld. I knock on the doors of death. I wander into the fields to stare at the sun and lie in the grass, ripe as a fig. The souls of the gods are with me. They hum like flies in my ears. I am I. I will what I will. Mine is a heart of carnelian, blood red as the crest of a phoenix.

Check out Scott Haefner's website on kite aerial photography. Includes lots of cool pics, tips, & tech details about the gear. There's also a page of really cool QTVR panoramas.

I had to lift this line from Singlenesia. Kudos!

Politicians are not our masters. They are our employees.

In spite of the cultural revolution, China hosts one of the most amazing art festivals on the planet. The Harbin Ice And Snow Festival runs from Jan 5 through Feb 15th and hosts an entire city made of ice.



From the website of R. todd King: "The ice festival, a few miles away from the snow festival, is anything but dull and colorless.  Crowds flocking to the entrance are greeted by dance music booming in the distance, as if at an outdoor pop concert.  And bright neon colors shine everywhere, buried within huge blocks of ice forming structures as high as thirty meters, such as this huge structure beyond the entryway.  You can just make out people standing atop its blue and red stairway."

The Continuity Pages compile some info on Grant Morrision's comic hypersigil The Invisibles, including a number of cover images, as shown above. They've also listed the TPB's and all the issues included in each edition. I can't recommend this series enough, though it's certainly not for the faint of heart. If you like Illuminatus! Trilogy, this is for you.

Google Zeitgeist is a cool blog which presents trend analysis from Google queries. Lot's of interesting info to view the pulse of the internet.

Turning The Tide

Here are some excerpts from A Book of Surrealist Games. It's interesting to note the crossover between these surrealistic methods and similar tools employed by modern chaos magick.

From Dali's Paranoic-Critical Method:

According to Dali by simulating paranoia one can systematically undermine one's rational view of the world, which becomes continually subjected to associative transformations, "For instance, one can see, or persuade others to see, all sorts of shapes in a cloud: a horse, a human body, a dragon, a face, a palace, and so on. Any prospect or object of the Physical world can be treated in this manner, from which the proposed conclusion is that it is impossible to concede any value whatsoever to immediate reality, since it may represent or mean anything at all" (Marcel Jean). The point is to persuade oneself or others of the authenticity of these transformations in such a way that the 'real' world from which they arise loses its validity. The mad logic of Dali's method leads to a world seen in continuous flux, as in his paintings of the 1930s, in which objects dissolve from one state into another, solid things become transparent, and things of no substance assume form.

The Paranoiac-critical method is thus the reverse of the children's 'picture-puzzles' in which people are hidden in drawings of trees etc, and resembles more the 'double-images' employed by psychologists. The two faces that become a vase, and other similar illusions such as faces seen in rocks, landscapes in marble and the anthropomorphic forms of plants such as the mandrake root.

Indeed, much of magick and shamanism constitutes a sort of controlled schizophrenia, or "systematic derangement of the senses" to break down our ingrained preconceptions of "reality" and open the mind to perceiving on new levels.

Here's the link to Robert Anton Wilson's "Guns & Dope Party" homepage.

We advocate
[1] guns for those who want them, no guns
forced on those who don't want them (pacfists, Quakers etc.)
[2] drugs for those who want them,
no drugs forced on those who don't want them (Christian Scientists etc.)
[3] an end to Tsarism and a return to constitutional democracy
[4] equal rights for ostriches.

Question: Terrence McKenna saw wild stuff happening between now and December 21, 2012 C.E. How do you think Californians can best prepare themselves to live long and prosper in the crazy days ahead?

RAW Answer: They should all buy [b,u,y, BUY, not rent] the video or DVD of SOUTHERN STAR, a comedy starring Orson Welles as a Gay banditto and Olga, an ostrich, as a diamond thief. At certain points, if you've taken your pain medicine for the day, Olga speaks directly to the audience -- to YOU -- and her words always contain both pragmatic and mystic wisdom.

For instance, once I asked her how to contribute most to the coming unity of all critterkind, instillling respect for "all life however small" as it says in the Upanishads, and she suggested appointing ostriches as 1/3 of the legislature. Of course, some left-wing aardvarks have complained about this [they call it "bipedal chauvinism"] but I trust Olga.

Most humans haven't gotten to the level of realizing the personhood of other races yet, you know. Bipedalism represents a great leap forward toward universal critterkind, and you have to take these things one step at a time.The six-legged majority still inspire fear and loathing in backward societies.

If Olga doesn't talk to you, you need more pain medicine, and frankly I don't understand how you've survived three years of George W Bush without it. Maybe you should try the Bible or the Koran or Chinese fortune cookies.

From the TAILVIPER website:

The TAILVIPER is a skateboard accessory that sticks discreetly on your deck and delivers a Nasty Blast of Sparks when you drag your tail. Sparks will vary with the amount of force applied, the length of dragging, and the coarseness of the skating surface.

Associated Press notes of human clinical trials for brain implants which would allow patients to communicate with a computer by thought alone.

Cyberkinetics Inc. of Foxboro, Mass., has received Food and Drug Administration approval to begin a clinical trial in which four-square-millimeter chips will be placed beneath the skulls of paralyzed patients.

If successful, the chips could allow patients to command a computer to act — merely by thinking about the instructions they wish to send.

NeoFiles v1 #6 has a nice interview with novelist, futurist, and all-around genius, Robert Anton Wilson.

I don't think politics is all that important. Spending too much time focused on politics leads to total despair with the state of the human race. But if you look at the whole spectrum of human behavior, I think the science and the arts are driving it. I think the sciences and the arts relate to a lot more of human behavior than politics does. They're going to try to stop developments in science but they're not going to stop it and it's going to change everything. I think we're going to have major breakthroughs in biotech in the next five-ten years and they can't do a damned thing to stop it. It's going to change the whole world. Meanwhile the Japanese are planning on building hotels in space.

Check out the Complete 911 Timeline by the Center For Cooperative Research. These planes didn't just suddenly come out of the sky from nowhere. The world is a very complex, dynamic place. We weren't attacked because of our "freedoms" or our nice houses. Highly recommended if you don't believe everything you hear on the news.

Technoccult contributor wu has written a cool piece on ritual convocation of corporate egregores.

Determining that an egregore is both the holy guardian angel/superego and the shadow/id, of a groupmind, I started out on this project with a vague idea that corporations could be manipulated through a demonological perspective, a kind of pseudo-goetia for the stock market. A serious re-evaluation of the ritual presented in that and other grimoires is certainly in order, but the premise is the same. Working with corporate egregores with the intent to subvert and/or otherwise disperse that manifestation is toxic magic, and certain steps are important in such work to protect the worker. Egregores such as these that are purely profit-driven are a kind of energy vampire, existing through the energy put forth both by those that work within the corporation, its investors, and its consumer base. If called into a hostile environment into a spiritual presence, it would not hesitate to drain an attuned magician of all available energy as well, for that is in its nature.

UCI researcher Garnet Hertz presents an interesting study in post-humanism:

This project involves a set of living Giant Madagascan Hissing cockroaches equipped with miniature wireless videocameras on custom-built backpacks. These specialized backpacks are worn by the cockroaches and transmit wireless video to televisions within the gallery space. The cockroaches are contained within a medium-sized terrarium placed on a plinth within the installation space, and are able to roam around the external environment during predetermined times.

This work is positioned within the context of technology in relationship to contemporary human culture. Posthumanism - which can be defined as a re-working of the limitations of the human form through radical uses of technological means - appears to be primarily concerned with issues of genetics and other efforts to extend and enhance human-oriented life. This work comments on posthumanism through the definition of non-human forms inheriting the title of "posthumans". Although transhumanist efforts will likely enhance human life, it is still most probable that non-human organisms - like the resilient cockroach, for example - will outlast human society.

I can imagine a future where insects with microminiaturized wireless cameras are released back into their native habitats to transmit their daily lives out to the www. Check out the site for a QT movie of one of his hissing subjects.

[Thanks to Reality Carnival for the link.]

The Economist.com has an interesting article about how advances in quantum computing - and the roadblocks encountered along the way - are pushing research into the deep depths of quantum physics. At question is the gray zone between the quantum world of the miscroscopic and the classical world of the macroscopic. In this zone lies the phenomenon of observer-mediated decoherence of quantum probability into absolute measurement - the collapse of the waveform and the formality of occurence.

Until a qubit interacts with the macroscopic world, which follows the classical laws of physics, it behaves according to the laws of quantum mechanics, which are well understood, at least by physicists. However, the interaction with the classical world—decoherence—and hence exactly where the divide between the quantum and classical worlds lies, are not well understood. When decoherence is deliberately provoked, the process is known as measurement. Before a qubit is measured, for example, it could have a 90% chance of being 1, and a 10% chance of being 0. After the measurement, it takes on one of these two values. But the details of how it chooses between the two are something that, until the advent of quantum computing, most physicists chose to remain agnostic about. Some even quipped that the answer to that question was beyond the realm of physics.

MSNBC.com has an AP article about the "perfect storm" brewing in robotics. Fueled by cheap parts, technological advancements, and lots of government cash, the silicon dreams of robotics are quickly becoming reality.

Just as the constant march of technology is driving down the cost of key components, top universities in robotics are reporting major increases in federal funding, with the Defense Department the biggest spender.

The military desperately wants to reduce the number of soldiers killed by roadside bombs or surface-to-air missiles — cheap implements of war that have felled scores in Iraq. Many in the Pentagon believe the answer lies in autonomous air, sea and land vehicles...

“There’s billions being spent by the government developing robotics and you look at that and you can’t say that’s not going to have an effect on the commercial sector,” Reid said. “That investment by the military is going to spin off.”

Grey Lodge Occult Review #11 is now available online. Features writings by Chris Hyatt & Jason Black, Aldous Huxley, Howard Bloom, WSB, Antonin Artuad, Foucault, and Colin Wilson, among many others.

The Romanian village of Marotinul de Sus apparently has had a long-standing problem with vampires. Not content to have their organ banks sucked dry by the undead, villagers have taken matters into their own hands and are getting medieval on their blood-sucking asses.

The saga began when Petre Toma, 76, was buried at the New Year. His nephew's family fell ill with an unexplained sickness and a few days later a witness claimed to have seen Toma leaving their house before sunrise as a flock of crows flew portentously overhead.

"He sucked the life from us so that he could live," said Mirela Marinescu. "We were all dying, my husband and my child, and we all saw him come to us in the same dream."

Armed with hammers and chisels, and fortified with home-made schnapps, four men led by Gheorghe Marinescu, the supposed vampire's brother-in-law, set out for the cemetery.

"When we lifted the coffin lid his arms were not on his chest as we had left them but at his sides," said Marinescu. "His head was turned to the side and his lips were stained with dried blood."

After the corpse's chest had been opened with a wooden stake the heart was removed. "It was full of fresh blood," said Marinescu. "His body relaxed and we heard him sigh."

The heart was burnt over the embers of a fire and the ashes stirred into a bottle of water from the village well to make a potion. The vampire's "victims" recovered after drinking it but Toma's daughter called the police.

Investigators soon discovered evidence of up to 20 vampire slayings in the past few years. At the regional police station, the commissioner, Gheorghe Sandu, said: "I'd like to be able to say this village is unique, but unfortunately I can't because I know just how strong belief in vampires is here."

Correspondents in Columbo, Sri Lanka, report the death of a 71-year old sorcerer after attempting to harness evil forces.

A SRI Lankan magician killed himself during a black magic ritual to harness evil forces after he was overwhelmed by the spirits he had drunk, rather than those he was trying to cast spells on, a press report said today.

The 71-year-old man had used his full force to dash a coconut on the ground as part of the ritual on behalf of a customer, but lost his balance and ended up hooked on the trident, a weapon of Hindu gods, the Sinhalese-language Lankadeepa said.

The paper quoted the victim's son as saying he had been drunk at the time.

Doctors said his death last week was due to excessive bleeding and shock.

MSNBC.com notes the growing disillusionment with corporate offshoring, citing bad code, mounting costs, and time & language barriers. Now many companies, like Dell, Lehman Bros, and Capital One, are yanking their overseas departments and returning to on-shore talent.

As U.S. companies move from exporting call centers to outsourcing more complex work like software development, they're finding overseas workers are often ill-equipped to deliver consistent, quality work. The bad experiences are creating a boomerang effect—the return of jobs to the United States—which some have dubbed "onshoring." Analysts at research firm Gartner have declared 2004 the start of the "trough of disillusionment" with offshoring.

You've always wanted to but never knew how... Lucy A. Snyder gives us the rundown.

Step 1: Find a suitable badger. Specimens from zoos are ideal, but suitable badgers can be found as roadkill along highways in many parts of North America, the British Isles, continental Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa.

Other animals of family Mustelidae can be used in place of a badger, but an adapter may be required. See Appendix II for details.

Step 2: Once you have obtained a dead badger, check it carefully for structural damage, particularly in the spine, skull, and legs. Dead badgers do not heal, and a badger with broken legs will display limited mobility. Brain and spinal cord damage is likely to interfere with the Linux installation and render any successfully-installed system unstable, as well as voiding all explicit and implicit warranties according to the laws of any and every state, country, or alternate dimension, present or future.

As a precaution against infection, wear latex gloves at all times when handling your dead badger. It is highly recommended that you wash the carcass with a suitable flea-killing shampoo.

Step 3: Obtain a copy of FleshGolem or other cyberspiritual controller program. This test was conducted with a copy of FleshGolem downloaded from the Apple site's utilities section. Follow all installation instructions carefully, including addenda in the readme.txt file.

All cyberspiritual controllers should be compatible with either Duppy cards or SpiritInTheSky adapters.

[Thanks to Singlenesia for the tip.]

Not sure if i've posted this before but Cliff Pickover's Reality Carnival reminded me of just how cool this is. Drawn by R. Crumb for the cult comic mag Wierdo, it details the story of Phillip K. Dick's religious experience in the '70's. This is information that is critical to understanding Dick, especially his last 3 novels which were essentially explications of his experience.

Thanks to Future Hi for this quote from Terence McKenna:

The planet is some kind of organized intelligence. It's very different from us. It's had over 4 billion years to create a slow moving mind which is made of oceans and rivers and rain forests and glaciers. It's becoming aware of us, as we are becoming aware of it, strangely enough. Two less likely members of a relationship can hardly be imagined - the technological apes and the dreaming planet. And yet, because the life of each depends on the other, there's a feeling towards this immense, strange, wise, old, neutral, weird thing, and it is trying to figure out why its dreams are so tormented and why everything is out of balance.

13 girls and 3 boys at a camp in Kuala Lumpur went berserk, screaming that their toilets were haunted.

The perceived hauntings continued with another four girls becoming hysterical late Tuesday after claiming to have seen the same apparitions in the toilets, the daily said.

Muslim faith healer Abu Bakar Hassan and his assistants were summoned from Kuala Lumpur, and a camp instructor told the newspaper that Abu Bakar had “caught the spirits and thrown them into the sea.” The group also spent time “cleasing” the area, he said.

Attempting to explain the phenomenon, the camp instructor said that all of the girls were "having their periods." Apparently the boys were just along for the ride.

The Center for American Progress has fact-checked Condoleezza Rice's testimony to the 9-11 Commision. Not surprisingly, her testimony - what little she gave since most of her time was spent as a filibuster - seems to veer a bit from known facts.

CLAIM: "We decided immediately to continue pursuing the Clinton Administration's covert action authorities and other efforts to fight the network."

FACT: Newsweek reported that "In the months before 9/11, the U.S. Justice Department curtailed a highly classified program called 'Catcher's Mitt' to monitor al-Qaida suspects in the United States." Additionally, AP reported "though Predator drones spotted Osama bin Laden as many as three times in late 2000, the Bush administration did not fly the unmanned planes over Afghanistan during its first eight months," thus terminating the reconnaissance missions started during the Clinton Administration. [Sources: Newsweek, 3/21/04; AP, 6/25/03]

CLAIM: "The strategy set as its goal the elimination of the al-Qaida network. It ordered the leadership of relevant U.S. departments and agencies to make the elimination of al-Qaida a high priority and to use all aspects of our national power -- intelligence, financial, diplomatic, and military -- to meet this goal."

FACT: 9/11 Comissioner Jamie Gorelick: "Is it true, as Dr. Rice said, 'Our plan called for military options to attack Al Qaida and Taliban leadership'?" Armitage: "No, I think that was amended after the horror of 9/11." [Source: 9/11 Commission testimony, 3/24/04]

The Anarchy Archives presents a huge collection of writings by radical activist Emma Goldman. THe anti-political theory of Anarchy has often been dragged down by associations with violent rebellion and nihilistic chaos. Emma reminds us that anarchism is really the ultimate form of personal responsibility and freedom. Something to aspire towards, not fear. From Anarchism: What It Really Stands For:

ANARCHISM:--The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.

Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.

This undated handout shows a human burial in Cyprus with cat skeleton, bottom, that is estimated to be 9,500 years old. The research team of National Museum of Natural History in Paris uncovered the carefully buried cat on Cyprus, placed just inches from a human burial that also contained polished stones, shells, tools and jewelry. (AP Photo/American Association for the Advancement of Science, P. Grard)

Extensive commentaries on Liber AL by Marcello Mota ar eavailable at The Hermetic Library. Fitting for the hundredth anniversary of the receipt of this influential document.

From tonight's syndicated Simpsons, courtesy of the Simpsons Archive:

Wiggum: Lou! Lou, are you all right?
Lou: The electric yellow has got me by the brain banana ...
Wiggum: I ... see.
[Chief Wiggum takes the bottle from Lou's hand and dabs his
finger with it, giving it a taste]
Wiggum: My God, it's nothing but carrots and peyote.
Eddie: Damn longhairs never learn, Chief.
Wiggum: Eh, it's time for an old-fashioned hippie ass-whomping!

Note also that the Season 4 DVD's will be available June 15, 2004.

Young buddhist monks with a cat at their monastery. Man[sic] tamed the cat around 9,500 years ago, more than 5,000 years than previously thought, according to a find of an ancient feline skeleton in Cyprus.(AFP/File/Stephen Shaver)

Hooded penitents of the Brotherhood of Santa Catalina carry crosses during an Easter Holy Week procession in Seville, Spain, Thursday, April 8, 2004. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

Reuters reports that researchers at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris have unearthed a cat that was buried beside a human in a Cyprus tomb 9,500 years ago. It had been previously thought that feline domestication originally occured in Egypt around 4,00 years ago.

"The burial of a complete cat without any signs of butchering reminds us of human burials and emphasizes the animal as an individual," the researchers wrote.

"The joint burial could also imply a strong association between two individuals, a human and a cat. In addition, the young cat might have been killed in order to be buried at the same time as the human."

This week marks the 100th anniversary of Crowley's receipt of the Book of the Law. This strange document was channeled by Crowley's wife, Rose, under very odd circumstances. In trance she produced information that Crowley believed she had no way of knowing, confirming to him that she was indeed receiving something given by some intangible entity. This became the most profound experience of Crowley's life and essentially informed everything that followed in his work.

Many have no doubt experienced radically altering events which completely disrupt their views of reality. Some are driven mad by them, while others seek to understand and integrate the experience. Crowley was of the latter group and spent his life fleshing out his mythology, heavily influenced by the Golden Dawn, Kabbalah, Alchemy, Taoism, Yoga, the Sutras, and Tarot, among others. But it was the Book of the Law which became the center around which everything else orbited. It was, and still remains, the principle holy document of Thelema, viewed with near-religious awe and respect by many followers. Indeed, Crowley was arguably the most influential mystic of the 20th century.

Regardless of whether the text was given by a discarnate entity known as Aiwass, perhaps to inform humanity of the new age and christen Crowley as it's prophet, or whether it was simply the result of intense trance and ritual, welled up in the mind of Rose Crowley, the circumstances remain unique and intriguing and the cryptic document itself is certainly worth study. In 1904 the voice which spoke through Rose harkened a new age of warfare and violence, of great discovery and enlightenment, and of a great clash between the old ways and the new, personified by the Egyptian god Horus as the warrior-prince, child of the New Aeon. The century since certainly seems to have lived up to the predictions.

Einstein's Theory of Relativity rose to challenge the bedrock of mechanics, as Freud and Jung opened up the human mind. Soon after, WW1 broke out followed by WW2. Quantum mechanics began to take hold, and the discovery and identification of DNA revolutionized biology and medicine. The invention and use of the Atomic Bomb was mirrored by the discovery of LSD and its own cultural explosion. TV came in time to bring the Korean and Vietnam wars to millions of viewers, as well as the lunar landing and the Kennedy assassination. Individualism and relativism, political discourse, civil rights, religious & spiritual diversity, and all the struggles associated with these ideologies have lead us into the new millenium with the brilliant light of creation, and the brutal darkness of conflict. Wars of religion dominate the world once again while power hungry apes manipulate the zealots like puppet masters in the Great Carnival at the End of Time.

The Book of the Law is both a warning and a guide to navigate through the perilous times in which we now live, hurtling towards some vast incomprehensible Omega Point, carried along on the currents of civilization, but ever infinite and timeless within the silent center of consciousness.

1.3: Every man and every woman is a star.

2.9: Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains.

Mohammad Yusaf, a 48-year-old father of nine among his poppies in Dare Noor, Afghanistan, on Tuesday, April 6, 2004. Afghan opium poppies were the source of three-quarters of the world's heroin last year, triggering warnings that the country is turning into a "narco-state." The government has outlawed poppy cultivation, but output has skyrocketed since the fall of the hardline Taliban in late 2001. (AP Photo/CP, Stephen Thorne)

From randomWalks:

LVX23 reminds me what can be so great about weblogs - it's like he's blogging just for me.

Thanks! Makes me think of "personalized blog subscriptions" that could be customized, sort of like an RSS feed but with a bit more depth and character. Maybe a cross between a bot and a blog... a personalized bot that wrote a daily blog for you! Hmm....

One of the things I really like about blogging is the transparency and interconnectedness of the community. I love being able to follow links from my stats page and check out the sites that are linking to me. I've gotten turned on to some great stuff out there and I hope I've been able to do the same for others.

BrainMachines.com has posted an interview with author and neuronaut Daniel Pinchbeck (scroll down past all the other really cool links on the page... but then check out some of the other really cool links on the page). Here's an interesting bit from the interview where Pinchbeck opines about the significance of Burning Man:

Q. In your Rolling Stone article, "The Fire this Time," you highlight the amazing growth and technological focus of the Burning Man Festival. How do you see Burning Man in the context of the ancient gatherings like the Eleusinian Mysteries? Do you think that the Black Rock City community can be a model for a more permanent kind of community?

A. Burning Man is the post-modern continuation of those ancient festivals-it is a miraculous manifestation of the "Archaic Revival" described by Terence McKenna. On an occult level, I almost suspect that Burning Man is creating a model, on the astral plane, for how all human communities will exist in the future. One amazing aspect of Burning Man is how the event penetrates into one's dream life-after going there, I dreamt about some version of it almost every night for many months afterwards. I know that many people have the same reaction. How could the egalitarian, freedom-oriented, cashless, utopian form of Burning Man be implemented in a more permanent way, or on a larger scale? I have no clue.

[via New World Disorder]

Socialist theater director Khaled Elsawy (L), dressed as a U.S. marine, holds a toy gun and terrorizes spectators as they enter a theatre in Cairo. Elsawy believes in shock tactics to convey his alarmist message to a steady stream of Cairo audiences. (Aladin Abdel Naby/Reuters)

A cast of the face of Pharaoh Ramses VI lies in its tomb March 21, 2004, after renovation works finished in Luxor. The tomb of Ramses VI, who ruled from 1156 to 1145 BC, was robbed within a 100 years of the pharaoh's death and his sarcophagus was broken into hundreds of pieces. A U.S.-funded project has gathered about 250 pieces to re-assemble much of the original sarcophagus. But the team have had to use a cast of the face because the original has been in the British Museum since 1823. (Aladin Abdel Naby/Reuters)

Preview the new Wilco album here. Another amazing release.

"It was divine intervention. I have a great devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe ... and had just looked up at the $2 million and said a little prayer to her when I hit the jackpot. Our Lady really looks out for me."

-- GUADALUPE LOPEZ, mother of JENNIFER LOPEZ, telling the New York Daily News how she hit a $2.4 million jackpot on an Atlantic City, N.J., slot machine.

The New Jersey Times-Beacon reports on a recent atrocity that's got local police in a frenzy. Tuckerton residents Denny Lyons and Laney Rice have had one of their lawn gnomes stolen and ransomed.

The ransom note states: "If you ever want to see your gnome again, leave three snickers bars, two Yoo-hoo's and one Coke and the newest Playboy edition in the baseball dugout 3 p.m. Sunday. Don't try anything tricky or else you'll never see your gnome again. The Gnome Bandits."

On Monday, Rice recieved a second ransom note stating: "This is not funny. You put one thing we wanted in the box. We ain't joking. We could do serious damage to your little precious gnome."

Police tried unsuccesfully to snag the Bandits with a clever sting operation.

After getting the note, police then set a box at the field trying to lure the people who did it, but they had no success in capturing the perpetrators, Sgt. Michael Caputo said.

"We're on the lookout for it," Caputo said. "At this point in time we think that it's a couple of kids playing a joke."

"But we are continuing to investigate," Caputo said.

Suffice it to say that the Tuckerton PD has some free time on its hands.

AP Newswire reports of a Roman Catholic priest busted for growing 35 pot plants in the church rectory.

[judge Patricia] Cosgrove asked [the Rev. Richard] Arko why he jeopardized his career by growing marijuana. Arko said he strongly believes in the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes and has seen it benefit people with illnesses. He said he looked forward to the day when it would not be illegal.

Nice to see the church contributing to society in a positive way.

A Hindu holy man prays to the sun god as he takes a dip in the river Kshipra in Ujjain, India, Monday, April 5, 2004. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims arrived Sunday for a dip in the river that they believe can wash away their sins, part of a month long religious festival. (AP Photo/Prakash Hatvalne)

MAPS has listed video archives of the recent ABC Peter Jennings report, Ecstasy Rising.

MSNBC reports that the voice actors for the Simpson's characters have gone on strike for more money. The principle voice-overs are stalled and the upcoming 16th season may be delayed.

...the source confirmed a report in Hollywood trade paper Daily Variety that each of the six cast members was demanding a a salary of $360,000 per episode, or nearly $8 million for a 22-episode season. Each actor currently is paid $125,000 per episode, the source said.

Here's another plug for SourceryForge.org. It's basically a Wikipedia for the occult. As such, it grows by your contributions. Check it out, learn something, share something...

CNNMoney.com reports that more than 60% of U.S. corporations payed little or no taxes during the massive economic boom of the late 90's.

The GAO analysis of Internal Revenue Service data comes as tax avoidance by both U.S. and foreign companies also is drawing increased scrutiny from the IRS and Congress. But more so than similar previous reports, the analysis suggests that dodging taxes, both legally and otherwise, has become deeply rooted in U.S. corporate culture. The analysis found that even more foreign-owned companies doing business in the U.S. -- about 70% of them -- reported that they didn't owe any U.S. federal taxes during the late 1990s.

Skin for peace : A United National Party (UNP) supporter sporting a peace message on his shaved head listens to Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe at an election rally in Colombo. (AFP/Str )

View of an expanding halo of light around a distant star named V838 Monocerotis. Dozens of stars that are known to have planetary systems could have a planet like Earth(AFP/NASA-HO/File)

Berkeley Lab researchers have discovered some intriguing properties of the metal indium gallium nitride which could lead to solar cells capable of absorbing the entire spectrum of sunlight and converting it to electricity.

Researchers in the Materials Sciences Division (MSD) of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, working with crystal-growing teams at Cornell University and Japan's Ritsumeikan University, have learned that the band gap of the semiconductor indium nitride is not 2 electron volts (2 eV) as previously thought, but instead is a much lower 0.7 eV.

A newly established low band gap for indium nitride means that the indium gallium nitride system of alloys (In1-xGaxN) covers the full solar spectrum.

The serendipitous discovery means that a single system of alloys incorporating indium, gallium, and nitrogen can convert virtually the full spectrum of sunlight -- from the near infrared to the far ultraviolet -- to electrical current.

"It's as if nature designed this material on purpose to match the solar spectrum," says MSD's Wladek Walukiewicz, who led the collaborators in making the discovery.

Indium gallium nitride's advantages are many. It has tremendous heat capacity and, like other group III nitrides, is extremely resist to radiation. These properties are ideal for the solar arrays that power communications satellites and other spacecraft. But what about cost?

"If it works, the cost should be on the same order of magnitude as traffic lights," Walukiewicz says. "Maybe less." Solar cells so efficient and so relatively cheap could revolutionize the use of solar power not just in space but on Earth.

[via Sauceruny]

Wired notes that NASA & Stanford scientists are launching a test to verify the esoteric frame-dragging effect of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity.

He proposed in 1916 that space and time form a structure that can be curved by the presence of a body, like the Earth, warping it like the dimple created by the heft of bowling ball resting on a soft mattress. That distortion accounts for gravity.

Two years later, others suggested that the rotation of such a mass should drag space-time with it, twisting the structure of the fabric.

If theory holds, the mass and rotation of the Earth, 397 miles below the probe, should throw the alignment of the spinning balls off kilter in subtle but measurable ways.

The warping effect has been measured before. The twisting effect, called frame-dragging, has never been directly detected. Gravity Probe B aims to detect both.

Canneto di Coronia is in the news again. Theage.com reports that the mysterious fires which started occuring in January have started up again after a month's respite. Satan is still the prime candidate.

The fires started in mid-January and have claimed home appliances and fuse boxes in about half of the 20 houses. The blazes, originally blamed on the devil, have not hurt anyone.

"We're working in the dark. We don't have a single lead so far," said Pedro Spinnato, mayor of the trio of Caronia towns.

"Every time some new scientist comes to town they arrive thinking the whole thing has been invented or that they're going to solve the mystery in two minutes. They've all been wrong."

The 39 inhabitants of the town were evacuated after the regional Government declared a state of emergency in Canneto, which occupies a single street nestled between a railway line and the sea.

From the start, Gabriele Amorth, one of the Catholic Church's top exorcists, suspected the devil was at work. "I've seen things like this before," he said. "Demons occupy a house and appear in electrical goods," he said.

Yep, it's an actual Akira motorcycle.

From author and psychonaut Daniel Pinchbeck's website:

Among shamanic tribal cultures, plants that induce visions are the center of spiritual life and tradition. Tribes in Africa, Siberia, South and North America, and elsewhere believe that these plants are sentient beings, supernatural emissaries. They ascribe their music and medicine, their cosmology and extensive botanical knowledge to the visions given to them in psychedelic trance. For tribes in Africa, Siberia, North and South America, and many other regions, rejection of the visionary knowledge offered by the botanical world would be a form of insanity.

Magick is a broad term referring to any number of systems which seek to empower the individual with the ability to affect their world by force of Will. Some of these systems are very old, some very rigid, some are amalgamations of many systems, and some are very fluid and personal. Although magickal systems may include eastern philosophies and practices, the term "magick" is specifically western in origin and typically refers to western paths such as Qabbalah & Hermeticism. The term "magick" was created by Aleister Crowley in oder to distinguish practical sorcery from parlor magic, but also to give the word greater Qabbalistic significance by the addition of the 6th letter.

Magick proceeds from the notion that the phenomenal world of the senses is merely one aspect of the vast spectrum of reality, and that Newtonian Mechanics and Cartesian Geometry are logical simplifications of a far greater holographic plenum wholly incomprehensible by human minds. The role of the mage is thus to find the wonder of Creation reflected within, analyze and understand oneself, and then enact change within to guide the self closer to the Ideal. With suficient skill this internal metaprogramming can be turned towards the external world, allowing the mage to influence the chaotic web of life by strength of Will, invoking archetypes & spirits, charging the spell and casting it forth at the appropriate moment. This can be regarded as a system of nonlinear aetheric dynamics - a metaphysical butterfly effect. As such there are certain excercises which can be employed to bring the mage into harmony with the universe, specific techniques which can focus the intent and open the appropriate doorways, and various maps describing psychical realms and the constructs inhabiting them. It is the task of the student to become familiar with these techniques and to develop a magickal relationship with the world around them, as well as the world within.

The techniques, excercises, and maps of magick and the etheric realms are numerous and diverse. Arcane systems, shamanic ecstsies, dark grimoires, and esoteric glyphs all offer ways to reprogram ones perception and understanding of their reality. Any technique sufficiently understood and embraced will bring about change with the realization that reality is not a single fixed thing which we all view - but a collective experience of many diverse eyes imposing their maps on uncertain territory. Thus, magick is a system of belief just like any other, but it offers a rich mythology with which to embrace life, as well as the tools necessary to manifest our Will and bring our dreams into being. It's sort of like self-empowerment through controlled schizophrenia. But miraculously it seems to work. As Crowely has noted, you do certain things and certain results will follow. The method of science and the aim of religion.

Spring is upon us, the equinox having marked the beginning of the fire of Aries, Mars hangs in the sky, and the April Fool has taken another step towards the cliff edge. The Fool is the unbound innocence of Creation, preceeding duality. The hidden countenance of the nameles god. Nothing, beyond-nothing, silence, Harpocrates. The Absolute, vast yet singular, empty of form or even the idea of form, but swollen with the possibility of the Infinite. The equinox, Aries, the Fool - all mark new beginnings as life around us wakes from the slumber of Winter into the swollen days of Spring, ripe with life, bursting with creation.

Tomorrow night brings daylight savings and a full moon - the same moon that our forebears danced under, lit by fires, ten thousand years ago. Has it been so long? Our bodies have changed little, our minds have grown much, fragmented and become self-aware, integrating those distant voices of early consciousness into the rich psyche of the modern human mind. We still look to the sky, we still yearn to dance around fires, and we long for a simple relation to life, now but a distant hazy memory, dim but etched irrevocably into every cell.

Sometimes I look around at the asphalt and concrete, steel and plastics, and wonder, "where did all this come from?" Wouldn't we have been happier staying in the trees? The Fall into knowledge was the fall into self-awareness and the distinction of I & Thou. The Fall created the gap - the abyss - between the Kingdom and Heaven, between Spirit & Matter, our eyes opened to desire and suffering. We are no longer animals living within nature. We now study nature as observers and builders. We are evolving to wield the power of nature, the power of creation. Thus, the apes are becoming as gods, drawn ever closer to the singularity of total self-discovery, merging into the hologram of light, the web work of matter, and stepping out of time back into infinity.

I had to lift this from Invisible College. Cabo Wobbler and former rock god Sammy Hagar has revealed that in 1968, he was the unexpecting recipient of the old bedside alien mind-meld by telepathic 9th dimensional entities. Highway patrolman and rock critics wonder if this is why he could not drive 55.

"It's been a long, long time, but back in about '68, in Fontana, California, I had this unbelievable experience that would take this whole interview to even go into," Hagar told Guitar World magazine recently. "But I'm a firm believer - I have seen, have felt, have been contacted three or four different times. I have received information that has been valuable in my life from those people, and they have used me. I'm gonna sound like a complete nut here, but they have used me in an experimental fashion. The easiest way to put it is that they downloaded my brain information. When I was about 19 or 20, they downloaded everything that was in my head. And I caught 'em doin' it! I woke up in the middle of the night, thinkin', 'What's goin' on?' They were like, 'Oh, my god, he's waking up!' But this was all telepathy - there were no words being spoken. And as soon as I woke up - it was probably three o'clock in the morning - my whole room was so bright that I could hardly keep my eyes open. I was wide-awake, I could not move, eyes open, white room, they were still disconnecting - and when they did, it just went bang! Everything went back to normal, back to black. I was shaking, I almost passed out, I was sick to my stomach and almost had to throw up, it was so scary."

"It sent me on a course of curiosity. I bought a telescope, and I started reading UFO books, and I just got into the whole thing. And since then, there have been three or four other contacts with the same group of people. I don't know who the fuck they are, but I've narrowed them down to a people called the Nine, who are called that because they're from the Ninth Dimension. I've named my publishing company the Nine Music after them. It's a crazy thing, man. But to me, anyone who thinks we're the only ones here, despite the vastness of the entire universe, is fucking crazy. Those people gotta be put away - not the guys having these contacts!"

Santa Crux experimentalists Deepfried have released their debut, self-titled album. Weaving a rich array of electronic textures, processed rhythms, organic bass & watery guitar, the band pushes the envelope of downtempo into beautiful, hazy new territory. Highly recommended if you're looking for some shiny, buttery mellow grooves to bring on the long Summer days.

From Erowid, a cannabis user recounts a visionary experience in the Arizona desert...

The old Australian legends of the Dreamtime gained a newfound sacredness; I could see reflected in the Moon how our ancestors danced beneath her bright face ten thousand years ago in the stillness of the wilderness. All the cycles of life on Earth were perfectly meshed, like threads in a tapestry: even our species' recent trend toward destruction and rape would soon come to an end and we would once more come to love God, the Earth and Each Other.

I felt very peaceful, serene even; I suspect that if a pair of coyotes had come upon me and decided to rip me to shreds, I would have offered my nourishing body to them, for truly, what is death but a change in worlds, in planes of awareness? The Earth, Sky, Moon were immortal--and so was I. It was a simple, joyous, eternally patient feeling.

This story came out nationally about a week ago but it got buried by the U.S. press (no surprise). I'm reprinting it below in its entirety because I feel that it's extremely important. The link to the Independent is here. (BTW, the top story on CNN right now: "U.S. Job Growth Soars". They have no mention of this report. "Liberal media" my ass.)

'I saw papers that show US knew al-Qa'ida would attack cities with aeroplanes'

Whistleblower the White House wants to silence speaks to The Independent
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
02 April 2004


A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened.

She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was "an outrageous lie".

Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gagging order from a court by citing the rarely used "state secrets privilege".

She told The Independent yesterday: "I gave [the commission] details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation. I gave them everything so that they could go back and follow up. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented. These things can be established very easily."

She added: "There was general information about the time-frame, about methods to be used ­ but not specifically about how they would be used ­ and about people being in place and who was ordering these sorts of terror attacks. There were other cities that were mentioned. Major cities ­ with skyscrapers."

The accusations from Mrs Edmonds, 33, a Turkish-American who speaks Azerbaijani, Farsi, Turkish and English, will reignite the controversy over whether the administration ignored warnings about al-Qa'ida. That controversy was sparked most recently by Richard Clarke, a former counter-terrorism official, who has accused the administration of ignoring his warnings.

The issue ­ what the administration knew and when ­ is central to the investigation by the 9/11 Commission, which has been hearing testimony in public and private from government officials, intelligence officials and secret sources. Earlier this week, the White House made a U-turn when it said that Ms Rice would appear in public before the commission to answer questions. Mr Bush and his deputy, Dick Cheney, will also be questioned in a closed-door session.

Mrs Edmonds, 33, says she gave her evidence to the commission in a specially constructed "secure" room at its offices in Washington on 11 February. She was hired as a translator for the FBI's Washington field office on 13 September 2001, just two days after the al-Qa'ida attacks. Her job was to translate documents and recordings from FBI wire-taps.

She said said it was clear there was sufficient information during the spring and summer of 2001 to indicate terrorists were planning an attack. "Most of what I told the commission ­ 90 per cent of it ­ related to the investigations that I was involved in or just from working in the department. Two hundred translators side by side, you get to see and hear a lot of other things as well."

"President Bush said they had no specific information about 11 September and that is accurate but only because he said 11 September," she said. There was, however, general information about the use of airplanes and that an attack was just months away.

To try to refute Mr Clarke's accusations, Ms Rice said the administration did take steps to counter al-Qa'ida. But in an opinion piece in The Washington Post on 22 March, Ms Rice wrote: "Despite what some have suggested, we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles, though some analysts speculated that terrorists might hijack planes to try and free US-held terrorists."

Mrs Edmonds said that by using the word "we", Ms Rice told an "outrageous lie". She said: "Rice says 'we' not 'I'. That would include all people from the FBI, the CIA and DIA [Defence Intelligence Agency]. I am saying that is impossible."

It is impossible at this stage to verify Mrs Edmonds' claims. However, some senior US senators testified to her credibility in 2002 when she went public with separate allegations relating to alleged incompetence and corruption within the FBI's translation department.

The Washington Times has picked this up.

Author and cultural meme-ologist Douglas Rushkoff teaches a class called Theoretical Perspectives on Interactivity at New York University which includes a public blog for discussing course material. Recently there has been a fascinating thread discussing Grant Morrison's epic graphic novel, The Invisibles. It focuses on the notion of individuality versus idealism and the dialectic dance between Chaos and Control. Well worth a read...