http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/04/crisis-reality-check/
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/4/as_congress_stalls_on_immigration_deal
http://thinkafricapress.com/drc/corruption-congo-how-china-learnt-west?utm_content=bufferc0785&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/4/a_corporate_trojan_horse_obama_pushes
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10820
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/09/24/obama_to_world_bad_news_the_american_empire_is_dead

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18209-decadent-homosexual-activity-marijuana-and-abortion-caused-colorado-floods-talk-radio-minister-charges-denying-global-warming

http://www.nature.com/news/higgsogenesis-proposed-to-explain-dark-matter-1.13883?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews

i like how they dance around the question of photons being massless.
(i don't think they are entirely massless, just of very very small mass. and i think that eventual realization will blow up a lot of physics in a good way.)
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/october-2013/light-rays-do-the-twist

hrmmmn. i guess i'm posting this as a psa. be careful with assigning authority to journals with fancy names.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full

yes, i'd rather ghadaffi were still in power....
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/03/liby-o03.html

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/01/the_army_of_islam_is_winning_in_syria
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10732
http://rabble.ca/news/2013/09/quebec-charter-and-me#.UjtEw4FaXAI.facebook
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/20/the-military-turns-really-ugly-in-egypt/
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/24/us-credibility-in-syria-and-the-world/

this post is really horrific. i'm appalled.

the proclamation of 1763 was a british land claim that, for the first time, put large swaths of north america under direct colonial administration. it's primary purpose was not to acknowledge native ownership of the area but to state british claim to the area after the seven years war. it is true that a large swath of land was designated as "indian", but the purpose of this was to allow expansion under imperial terms, rather than the terms being developed in the colonies. the crown was looking to expand slowly and methodically, conquering one tribe at a time, while the colonies wanted to overrun the land as they pleased. this was a primary cause of the american revolution.

indigenous reaction to the proclamation was largely negative, as they rightfully viewed it as an unjust land claim. in response, a war erupted to drive the british out. many indigenous groups in the area were expecting the french (who claimed trade rights, but never land ownership) to come back and kept up small scale wars.

so, to claim it was the first time that the british acknowledged indigenous sovereignty? no. in fact, it was the first time a european power *rejected* indigenous sovereignty.

you're taking a document of colonial expansion that should be denounced and celebrating it for exactly the opposite thing that it was.

now, it's true that the courts have recently used the document to try and correct some of the theft that has happened, but the arguments they've used have been very creative and that doesn't excuse the historical revisionism in this post.

==

that ^ is going to get read.

it turns out the call-out on this is from some well-known activists. i'm not clear on what their goal in presenting this day in these terms would be. some kind of reclamation? but, this ought to be a day of deep mourning.

i want to clarify a few points that these organizers probably already know.

aboriginal title, as it existed in the proclamation, wasn't about indigenous sovereignty, it was about crown control of property. the proclamation is clear and explicit in asserting crown ownership of the land and the people that lived on it. the reason it was written is that the crown was concerned about things like settlers buying the land and selling it to france or spain. as there was no existing category of title for this land, and settlers would likely win a court battle as a result of that, they had to create a new class of land ownership to ensure crown control. this is aboriginal title.

the way the proclamation is written is to ensure two things:

(1) only the crown can purchase land under aboriginal title
(2) all land under aboriginal title will eventually be sold to the crown

regardless of how recent court cases have interpreted the proclamation, i don't understand what the aim is in rallying around historical inaccuracies, and i think that this tactic, whatever is underlying it, has the potential to make the action look foolish.

i mean, this is literally a celebration of the day that indigenous people in canada *lost* their sovereignty.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/daniel-wilson/2013/10/royal-proclamation-1763-heritage-moment#.UlCjSv0KlVc.facebook

speaking of conspiracies, i'm rather convinced that the only reason the us government cares about looking for life on mars or titan or anywhere else is that where there is life there is oil. well, the flip side is what, exactly?
http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/5719/ingredient-used-in-plastics-found-on-titan

here's a good use of gmos, so long as some company somewhere doesn't patent a way to monopolize a three or four step payment process...
http://phys.org/news/2013-09-nitrogen-fertilizer-uncovered.html

i was hoping they'd analyze questions of carrying capacity. as it is, this is speculative, and somewhat specious.
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/09012013/article/the-first-great-human-population-explosion
http://rabble.ca/news/2013/09/quebec-charter-and-me#.UjtEw4FaXAI.facebook

note that 26 states, so far, have opted out of this. that doesn't mean the government shutdown is "stupid", it means it's a trick.

i'm sorry, but the idea of gravitational waves strikes me as trying to ram a square peg into a circular hole. i think it's an idea that should be fully explored. i mean, everything else is waves, right? but just 'cause everything else is waves doesn't mean...

conceptually, it just doesn't make sense to me to think that matter pulls like that. it seems more like it's going to work the other way, somehow. some kind of vortex. imaginary black holes or something.

of course, i don't know. it just strikes me as backwards.

jour•nal•ist
/ˈjərnl-ist/
Noun
A person who writes for state-vetted newspapers or magazines or prepares state-written bulletins to be broadcast on state-vetted or state-controlled radio or television.
Synonyms
propagandist – publicist

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10803

i think the article is partially missing the point. i'm pretty solidly convinced that i don't learn well socially, and pretty convinced that i do learn well when given a lot of space and time to explore things independently. does that mean that some abstract type exists that describes me? that it can be quantified? only very weakly.

i never interpreted the idea underlying this as a strict separation of people into types. this isn't some absurd exercise in platonism. it was always a question of individuality v. conformity. and, on that level, i don't think it would be hard to find examples of students increasing their score by trying a different approach than the standard learning model. whether those individual shifts are then applicable to anybody else is a different question.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-teaching-to-a-students-learning-style-a-bogus-idea&WT.mc_id=SA_MindFacebook

PHOTONS HAVE MASS.

well, of course they do. it's really crazy to think they don't.

http://phys.org/news/2013-09-scientists-never-before-seen.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon#Experimental_checks_on_photon_mass
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/photon_mass.html

i'll believe this. ultimately, i don't think it matters a whole lot. i mean, it's interesting, sure. it's just....

i think we're philosophically mature enough at this point to realize, without too much debate, that whatever kind of explosion created the observable universe wasn't a unique event. maybe it was two slabs of energy smashing into each other in some distant dimension, as m-theory proposed. maybe it was some magic creature farting. or maybe it was something falling into a black hole. what's the difference, really?

whatever it was was some kind of explosion that happened in some kind of....structure....that already existed. we have no concept of that pre-existing whatever and aren't likely to gain one any time soon.

so, "something went boom" is good enough for me. the details are just academic.

http://www.nature.com/news/did-a-hyper-black-hole-spawn-the-universe-1.13743

there's probably something to this. but, correlation coefficients work as follows.

1 - completely positively correlated; if x then y.
0 - no correlation at all.
-1 - completely negatively correlated; if x then not y.

anything between 0 and 0.5 is pretty weak. 0.09, 0.13? that's evidence of almost no correlation, suggesting almost no relationship. the math suggests the opposite of what the article is saying.

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/10/vaccine-denial-conspiracy-theories-gmos-climate/

so, now the rebels in syria are fighting each other.

this is also curious:

"Meanwhile, with fighting between rival factions of the so-called rebels erupting on the border, the Turkish parliament Thursday approved, over stiff opposition, a resolution extending an authorization for the government to send troops into Syria.

...

Last year, the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan seized on the downing of a Turkish military plane by Syrian fighters and the killing of Turkish citizens by stray shells from the fighting inside Syria to push through the original resolution. This time around, it used the supposed threat posed by chemical weapons as the main pretext."

note that it seemed obvious at the time that the plane was sent into syrian airspace in order to be shot down.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/04/syria-o04.html

sending turkey into an arab country as an occupying force is....problematic....for the region.

that being said, i'd rather have the turks as the hegemon in the area than the other options - saudis, israelis, iranians....egyptians....

despite the recent shift away from secularism, turkey remains the most moderate state in the region. it's just that there's this sort of nasty history thing about five hundred years of turkish colonialism over arabic speakers...

the other major option the americans have been working with has been the saudis. gotta wonder if the infighting in the rebel army has something to do with a turkish/saudi split. well, i say wonder. it's pretty clear. that's dangerous.

on the one hand, british/american strategy in the area has long been to divide and conquer, which means maintaining a system of ever shifting, highly dynamic alliances. they want to, and can be, everybody's primary ally, while subtly manipulating everybody against each other. everybody is aware of this and how to play the game of lobbying for influence while not giving the impression of being too powerful. on the other hand, the americans need to be very careful about not upsetting the saudi aristocrats too deeply. see, they're prone to violent outbursts.

a little more subtle than turkey fighting with the saudis. it's more like the qataris fighting with the saudis/turks.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/01/the_army_of_islam_is_winning_in_syria?page=full

aborted haraway analysis

            I would prefer to be a cyborg and a goddess and I couldn’t begin to conceive of choosing one over the other.

            I identify as female, which may seem bizarre, but I’m certainly not the first male that’s been stuck in that predicament, nor will I be the last; although the condition is being increasingly detected in young children, sparing them from dealing with it as they grow older, we are still a quantum leap away (in terms of taboos) from eradicating these kinds of issues from our gene pool. This is possible; Tayman-Sachs is nearly gone. The justification would be humane and not supremacist. I would have nothing but eternal gratitude for the doctor that flipped a gene or two for me before he fertilized one of my mother’s eggs with genetically engineered sperm, which is the model of conception that men are going to have to learn to deal with in the very short amount of time that they have left. If you want a legitimate analysis of the situation from a highly articulate and neurotically rigorous mind, in case you’ve ever been curious, as a group we tend to simultaneously be well-read, independent minded, male hating lipstick lesbians and emotionally stalled teenage girls, the latter for obvious reasons of endocrinology. This is really the driving force behind the desire to manipulate what most of us would argue are entirely meaningless physical appearances; the mind can only develop separate from the body for so long before it can no longer develop, in certain ways, at all. I’m not a virgin, but I’m at the emotional level of one, stuck here until death ends the monotony as even if my glands finally miraculously figure out that they’ve actually got it all backwards this does not solve the psycho-sexual difficulties around the absence of virginity being an impossible to attain goal.

            Nonetheless, I don’t feel out of place discussing feminist philosophy, despite the maniacal objections of the tyrannical vagina-only fascists who would callously denigrate all those who suffer from genetic mutations and hormonal imbalances, as though they are inhuman monsters that are incapable of thought or emotion. Perhaps I should be brushed off as the naïve young woman that I hormonally am, lacking in post-menopausal wisdom, but to deny me of my female identity is so amazingly ironically exclusionist and cruel that I can harbour nothing but the most deep seated resentment possible towards those that would cast me aside as sub-female, sub-vaginal and sub-human. I will neither heed nor recognize the objections, criticisms and arguments that stem from that lobby. To them, I say, simply: Go mutilate another carrot.

            The goddess is far from dead; she is the fundamental anchor that our increasingly matriarchal society is rooted upon. The goddess sells us everything from tampons to condoms, from lingerie to sports cars, from folk tunes to dark techno, from art films to pornography; she is ubiquitous and appeals equally directly to both genders.  She transcends race, colour and political affiliation by shifting, chameleon-like, and assuming uncounted characteristics as she travels amongst us between the membranes of the eleventh dimension; she is an ideal that is as old as ideals itself, quite probably our earliest abstraction and quite certainly our most basest, primitive and universal relation. She is our collective conscience, our guiding moral principle; she is peace, harmony, love, justice and compassion. Even the most dystopian future conceivable could not eliminate the Goddess as the dour and painful existence that would result from her death is so ghastly that it is beyond human imagination. A world without love, not even at the base level between a mother and a child or a monk and his plants; a world where all life is as worthless as an annoying mosquito…this is a Goddess-less reality.

            An atheist would speak like this! The Goddess is not and never has been a deity to be grovelled to, she is not a master to serve or an overlord to appease; she is our most pure abstraction of perfection and our most powerful symbol of euphoria, something to behold in glory and to celebrate the beauty of. She reminds us that as terrible as reality is, as humiliating as our roles all may be, there is still hope because she still exists, even if she exists only as an abstraction.  She is karmic release, she is the second coming of Christ, she is the appearance of the messiah; she is the end of war, the end of tyranny, the end of history…the end of humanity. Yes, the end of humanity.

            It’s become increasingly clear over the last few decades that men are becoming increasingly superfluous. It is a biological fact throughout the animal kingdom that, excluding situations where sexual dimorphism demands otherwise, the female of the species always has sole command over their choice of mates. She guides evolution at every level, weeding out the strong from the weak and actually deducing, based on everything from colour to aroma to conversation, which sperm is likely to be the most valuable in creating the most fit offspring. The female of our own species are far from immune to these base instincts and far from capable of transcending or discarding them. As such, once the option is conceivable, the industrial use of semen will revolutionize our society; it will be placed upon the shelf beside the low-fat frozen yoghourt and sold to us by Goddesses. It is best to acknowledge the best-before date, of course. At first, there will be various flavours: blonde female, Somali model, linebacker male, etc but in time the females will be selected as once sperm is easily obtainable for a few dollars there will no longer be any need or desire to create men.

           

            So, we will have Godesses who will demand Goddesses; our political and business institutions will become sterilized playboy mansions.

            The most visible implementation of our current cyborg reality is in the increasing normality of cosmetic surgery. For women, a career in business, politics or media today is virtually impossible without first becoming a cyborg goddess. The lofty and previously unrealistic conceptions of the perfect female form are no longer thought of as idealizations or as the luck of a selected few, it is now recognized that it is a pragmatic necessity to conform to a certain plastic and constructed image if any success whatsoever is desired.

            When Haraway speaks of a cosmetic science,

summer, 2009

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/thoughts/trolls/essayharaway.html 

http://rabble.ca/news/2013/10/university-windsor-community-garden-empowers-people-feeds-community

first impressions on the new touche amore record

you can tell they used brad wood, as the sound is a lot brighter. it's a turn-off at first, but i'm getting used to it. i'm actually hearing what i'm interpreting as a weird influx of influence from charles spearin....

it's a more commercially viable record, and it gets a little too close to generic emo for me at points, but it still bites and it largely avoids the cheese that has bogged the genre down so badly. that's what attracted me to the band in the first place. it's like....they're walking back towards the point i was hoping the genre had left behind, but haven't gone so far that they're unlistenable.

yet. ?.

a haphazard review, yes. i'm missing the darker, more claustrophobic sound. yet, that's not to say i don't like brighter, more expansive punk, so it's....it's just going to take some time to form a stronger opinion.

yeah. this is sinking in well, especially through headphones. the lyrical continuity through the disc is also....funny thing is it's kind of exactly what i'm thinking about right now. this could become a sort of an important disc to me....

the shift to a more major-keyed sound is definitely impeding the record's passive re-listenability, though.

a comical video from an unknown bicyclist in new york that is protesting a stupid bylaw

jessica amber murray
i've decided that if i ever have a child (i will never have a child, and what follows is a good reason why), i will give it the same first, middle and last names. so, if it ends up having last name 'murray' then it's legal name will be murray murray murray.

while that sounds sadistic, the aim is actually for the child to choose it's own name free of any kind of suggestion from me or my partner(s).

until such a decision is made, the convention will be to refer to the kid merely as 'kid'.

Kardinal ZG
Cool. You also played 'what-shall-i-name-my-kid-to-have-it-beaten-regularly'.

jessica amber murray
surely, the kid will figure out what to name itself before it ends up going to school.

Kardinal ZG
I admire your optimism. Not so much your sense of social tact.

harper, you fucking idiot. see - i'm not crazy.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/03/the_case_for_canamerica_canada_america_merger

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/03/shut-o03.html

jessica amber murray
the issue of free will has come up a lot lately, specifically this question of whether certain types of behaviour are free or coerced. it's a very difficult point. you can't even really rely on what people say, as they may not be fully aware of how they're being coerced. so, how do you figure this out?

as an anarchist, i tend to lean towards the idea that most behaviour - and by that i mean most behaviour, in general - is deeply coerced by the structures of power that exist around us. that runs the spectrum from where or if you go to work to what kind of cereal you had this morning. that position has as many pitfalls as it's liberal anti-thesis, which is that we're always free to do whatever we choose (and tend to make well thought-out, rational decisions).

the error i think we all make, and i'm as guilty of this as everybody else, is that we tend to generalize one way or the other. this is a particularly egregious error due to the immense subtlety of the question.

what i think we all need to do when the question comes up is realize that every presentation of the question is unique. two similar people making similar choices could be the result of a free choice on one hand and deep coercion on the other. we can talk about coercive, systemic pressures, and seek to abolish them as much as possible, but we can't always make the assumption that similar acts - even with similar contexts! - are similarly derived.

that's a struggle for everybody, coming at the question from every perspective.

norman dee
Have you read any Camus in regards to freedom/free will?

jessica amber murray
no. people have been telling me for years i should read some camus, and i agree i should. i think i get the idea, though, through other sources. and i think he's been backed up through some experiments in psychology.

norman dee
Well, im not going to tell u to read him then. Just that he's had a huge impact on my life and my outlook and is someone who i keep going back too.

jessica amber murray
i've repeatedly been told i'm practically quoting him...i have this suspicion that, when i finally get around to it, it's going to seem like i'm reading my own writing. which is maybe why it's not at the top of the list.

i am making getting through the stack of books i have here a priority, though. got through a large pynchon text (mason & dixon) the other day, and have jumped to a gibson text (pattern recognition). there's a ton of classics i've picked up at garage sales for $0.50 each to get through (i'm thinking i'm going to go with some thoreau, next).

norman dee
I've only ever read civil disobedience and some of walden. I really really want to read gravitys rainbow.. I think thats pynchon if im not mistaken? If u are seriously going to get into camus, i would really recommend looking into what sartre was writing/doing at the time of said camus book. From 39 onwards they had a thing going

... A competing thing. If u can find it theres a book out by oxford press called... Yup.. Sartre & camus. Its really interesting and enlightening.

jessica amber murray
that is pynchon. probably my favourite book, ever.

elsipogtog

i'm still learning about this. a single course in aboriginal law does not an expert in the topic make. of the courses i took in my time formally studying constitutional law, though, it set off the deepest interest.

debates over how to approach these treaties and/or resist imperial authority are pretty similar to activist debates, in general. so, diversity of tactics. ok. but i've noticed a serious problem: those that want to work within the system of british law tend to want to bring in these analyses that make little sense within it's framework, and then get upset when the court dismisses them. if you're going to try and work through the british legal system, it's necessary to recognize that the historical understanding that it presents to this whole thing is drastically different than that that is presented by activists. activists can't just show up in court with a completely different concept of history and expect the court to side with them. so, we should have a debate about which is more correct, one may suggest. unfortunately, the british legal system doesn't give people at our level that kind of authority - the british legal historical context is defined by decisions that are made in parliaments, or, in the case of aboriginal law, often even by monarchs. and don't forget case law. arguing a case at this level is about interpreting the laws that the aristocrats make, not rewriting them; that interpretation then becomes put aside for future use.

so, fuck the system? well, ok. but for those that want to work in it, that contradiction sort of needs to be addressed to prevent themselves from wasting their time.

regarding the new brunswick dispute, there was, in fact, a treaty signed in 1760 by the group in question. now, you have to get the context of this right to understand the way the law is going to interpret this. france and britain had just ended a war that would give britain control of what would become eastern canada. the indigenous populations of the region had supported france in this war. that means that, from a british legal perspective, the indigenous people of eastern canada were *conquered* at the end of the "french and indian" war. why conquered? because they were aligned with the french, and the french were conquered. the treaties that followed were written within this context of being conquered.

the conquering part is huge within a british legal context. british imperial law in this context is rooted in roman imperial law. how far-reaching is the influence of the monarch (and then later of parliament)? the rule is that if a population is composed of "settlers" (like the american colonies, or australia) then they take british law with them, but if a population is composed of "conquered people" (like india or canada) then they keep their own laws, so long as those laws didn't interfere with the imperial administration. and, so quebec retained a roman civil law system rather than a british case law system, just as the romans allowed their conquered peoples to worship their own gods.
 
the particular treaty was not a land treaty, it was a friendship treaty. there are two reasons for this.

the first is that the indigenous signatories did not accept euro-centric concepts of land ownership. please decrypt that sentence carefully and purposefully. there were concepts of communal land ownership, and of land use, and of land sharing, but the idea of kicking the europeans out of "their" land would have been foreign to the indigenous peoples of the region, at the time. there were isolated exceptions (the six nations apparently had more european concepts of land ownership), but none in the maritime area. the view was more or less along the lines that nations could migrate through the land as they desired so long as they didn't prevent other nations from using it. (you'd end up with multiple tribes and nations *sharing* "hunting areas"). so, they sought no land treaty because they themselves would have rejected the concept of land ownership.

the other is that the land issue was already dealt with - the indigenous people, of course, being conquered in the seven years war, from the british perspective, and thus coming under their rule (but allowed to keep their laws and customs, which ironically included this rejection of land ownership). what was there to discuss on that point? what land treaty would a conquered people sign off on?

the treaty was about trade. on the indigenous side, the populations needed access to certain types of european goods - most importantly ammunition, for hunting. on the british side, they wanted to prevent uprisings, which they considered bothersome in the sense that they disrupted trade routes.

now, these treaties are in a perilous legal position. trudeau once claimed they weren't worth the paper they were written on, and he was right - legally. some of them weren't even written on paper, they were passed down orally. we've since had a constitutional overhaul. in theory, the contents of these treaties are legally binding (up to a set of convoluted caveats i'm going to ignore for right now), but they haven't been upheld in court yet. given past precedent, it's likely that the court will uphold individual rights while ignoring communal ones. yes, those fucking liberals...

that's not to say that a modern treaty isn't something that should happen. personally, i think that's along the right line of thinking, at least, although i don't like the xenophobia of ethnic nationalism. however, the legal position of the maritime groups is starkly different than those in british columbia or in the far north, or even in ontario. this claim of sovereignty has little chance of success within our court system.

here's something else to read:
http://etc.lib.unb.ca/acva/contestedterrain/sites/default/files/patterson_nsr_2009.pdf

http://sisis.nativeweb.org/mk/wabanaki.html

RE: shower again, and check

From: the initial landlord
To: "'Jessica Murray'" <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>

Jessica, there is a black rubber seal that fits around the outside of the black drain pipe that is about 3" in diameter. If we have sealed all the seams so that water is not getting down below the pan, we then have to look at the drain one more time before we pull the shower out to investigate below the pan. I will look at other fittings that could replace the existing drain with new parts that will create a seal. If that does not work the fitting below could be cracked or the glue that holds the fittings together may have let go. After that I will pull the shower out to investigate.

As for the direct deposit let me know how it will need to be set up and we explore that option.

ET and The Minotaur

E.T. and The Minotaur

It is the seven thousandth some odd year of the Common Era, but you don't know that. You are an archaeologist looking through the rubble of the centre of the once great American empire, the palace at Washing-Town. It is thought that this city, with its great public lavatory within walking distance from the palace, once served as a giant lavatory for the entire empire. Using gasoline powered vehicles, one of the many great technologies that were lost after the mysterious destructions that destroyed many great American cities all over the world, the people could commute from city to city within minutes at speeds of up to 300 kilometers per hour, as evidenced by surviving speedometers. Scores of people would descend on the lavatory at a time, which was guarded by policemen. You know this from surviving photographs.

Enough of this. You are in Washing-Town because a colleague has just informed you of a discovery that could change the world's understanding of classical American civilization forever. Ever since the study of Ancient America began, uncovered American literature has continually been found to make reference to strange things such as "aliens" and "robots". What these things were has been up to much debate ever since, with many stories conflicting. Most of what we know about them has been pieced together by the many great American historians such as Isaac Asimov. Other literature makes references to space ships and ridiculous things like walking on the moon. This had always been largely thought to be American mythology up until today.

You walk into your colleague's room and she hands you a file folder. In it is a giant photograph of an oddly shaped being, with the words "E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial" written underneath it. The strange creature has brown skin, blue eyes and a body shaped like a periscope. He appears beside a young child, looking somewhat distressed. Could this be proof that the aliens referenced in so much American literature really existed in the American Empire and killed millions of their citizens? Could the Americans have worshipped such a being? If not, then what was the function of the theatre that the picture was found in?

Of course not, this is all as silly as walking on the moon.

Similarly, the existence of a Minotaur is and always has been purely science fiction. Arthur Evans may have discovered a lot of evidence that proves that the existence of King Minos has some historical validity, but that does not prove the existence of the Minotaur any more than proving the existence of Steven Spielberg does of alien life on earth. Proof that the Minotaur existed would be the discovery of a valid fossil record and only the discovery of a valid fossil record. Honestly here, we're talking about a half-man, half-cow creature that lived in a cave and ate children. There are always going to be skeptics, and this author is always going to be one of them. This is not a problem for an archeologist, it is one for a paleontologist; if one truly believes that such a thing existed, perhaps a psychologist and/or a neurologist could be of some assistance.

Now, just because there is no proof that an actual Minotaur existed does not mean that the whole story is pure fiction. One more logical explanation for this "Minotaur" would be that perhaps the Minoans, as a further advanced and more powerful civilization, tricked the Athenians into giving away their kids in order to have some extra slaves hanging around. If the Minoans were truly the first power to have a navy, it seems logical that they would use it to bully the little guy around. Their early dominance over Mycenaean Greece seems proof that they did do just that. Maybe the Athenians were put under tribute and, after several generations, came to believe the stories that the older ones told in order to shield the younger ones from the truth. Maybe it was just a reason to eat your vegetables and had no truth to it all, the Athenians and Minoans in reality being the best of friends. It could even have been an attempt for the more powerful Minoans to control the Athenians - to force them to give up their best children or face the consequences of a horrible monster. This would be done in order to ensure that the Athenians did not become more powerful than themselves. Maybe this "Minotaur" was a lion, cougar, some sort of erect bird or another kind of wild animal. Or, perhaps it was simply a piece of historically invalid entertainment set in a period of time familiar to most, which is the opinion of this individual.

So, in conclusion, simply note that Arthur Evans did not find a valid fossil record of the Minotaur. Therefore, he has not convincingly proven its existence in the opinion of this author. Alternately, several fairly quickly thought up better alternatives to the existence of a half-man, half-bull beast have been cited, proving just how abundant better solutions to this quandary really are.

short assignment, greek civ 101
fall, 2000

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/thoughts/trolls/greekciv101.html

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/

file for appspot site: main.py

import os
from google.appengine.ext import webapp
from google.appengine.ext.webapp import util
from google.appengine.ext.webapp import template

class MainHandler(webapp.RequestHandler):
  def get (self, q):
    if q is None:
      q = 'index.html'

    path = os.path.join (os.path.dirname (__file__), q)
    self.response.headers ['Content-Type'] = 'text/html'
    self.response.out.write (template.render (path, {}))

def main ():
  application = webapp.WSGIApplication ([('/(.*html)?', MainHandler)], debug=True)
  util.run_wsgi_app (application)

if __name__ == '__main__':
  main ()

file for appspot site: app.yaml

application: dghjdfsghkrdghdgja
version: 1
runtime: python
api_version: 1

handlers:
- url: /(.*\.(gif|png|jpg|ico|js|css))
  static_files: \1
  upload: (.*\.(gif|png|jpg|ico|js|css))

- url: .*
  script: main.py

installation file:
python-2.7.3.amd64.msi

installation file:
GoogleAppEngine-1.8.5.msi

installation file:
python-3.3.2.amd64.msi

Shelly Teagan
Omfg everyone at my school is such a douche.

Its so unbearable. Im officially the freak again

Bhahahaha

Jessica Amber Murray
carry on. but did you call sarah? i like being a freak :P

Shelly Teagan
No i didnt yet. Also, what do i say???

Jessica Amber Murray
well, it's probably too late now, anyways. i was just hoping for an "are you ok?". a line from a song i like: "you, with your normal job, and your normal clothes, and your normal hair - you're fucked!"

Shelly Teagan
Lolol

Jessica Amber Murray
i don't when or if you'll have time for that, but i think you'll find it comical. trolling an english prof...hard...

Shelly Teagan
???

haha

Jessica Amber Murray
i'm sorting through some files, that's the other thing i'm doing this year. i have this preposterous web page i've been working on since the early 00s...

Shelly Teagan
lol

demo #6: bomb

again, i dunno about these lyrics, but i'm impressed by the music at points.

recorded in october, 1996. remastered on october 2, 2013.

installation file:
audio.exe

installation file:
firefox setup stub 24.0.exe

installation file:
network.exe

damages.doc

(edit - after calculating actual losses, and weighing the time required to launch a lawsuit, this thought process was permanently put on hold in the fall of 2013. i realized that what was most important to me could not be replaced, and would be difficult to determine actual costs of. i decided that my self-interest was not to drag on the past through litigation in what limited time i had available to me but rather to maximize my time by focusing on my art, and to move on. 25/08/2019.)

I have attempted to carefully compile a list of missing and damaged items, as well as their replacement costs. These items are missing or damaged due to theft or negligence. I am sending this document jointly to the stepmother and the sister with the hope that they can, together, determine what the cause of each missing item is and who it is that is responsible for returning or replacing it. I am sincerely hoping that legal action is not required in recouping what it is that I am legally and morally entitled to. While this list is as complete as I’ve been able to make it, it is likely incomplete. Should legal action be required, further items may be added if their disappearance is realized between now and then. Should legal action not be required, this document should be considered final.

For the bulk of the items that are missing, the relevant question is the cost of replacement, rather than the initial cost. There are items, however, that cannot be replaced and they will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

In the interests of fairness, I have taken the value of the items that were given to me into consideration. Once again, the issue is the amount it would have cost me to purchase the item on my own terms, not the amount that the item actually cost. Legally, this is not truly a relevant consideration, so please note that I am being generous in taking these things into consideration.

Please take special note of the section that contains items I would like returned.

That some of these things are missing may come as a surprise, so I am going to attempt to provide a few deductions as to what may have happened to some of it. There has already been some discussion surrounding negligence, and an admission of responsibility. I am also making a clear accusation of theft regarding at least two items. In addition to this, I am also missing a great deal of boxes for electronic items that I have purchased over the years. The boxes, of course, have no actual value except for their use value. However, I most certainly had a box for a computer tower that included dozens of smaller boxes for various items like external drives, pc cards, keyboards, etc. While most of those boxes were empty, some of them were not. It seems, then, that much of the electronics that I’m missing (and specifically the keyboard, microphone and external drive) were discarded accidentally with those thought-to-be-empty boxes, which also included a lot of user manuals and other useful things of the sort. I also suspect that a lot of the books that are missing were taken deliberately under the misunderstanding that they had previously belonged to the father of the stepmother. The relevancy of this concern is more personal than legal (and I am a just and empathetic person), but the blunt truth is that only a few of the missing books were actually his, and most of the books that I did take from him (with permission) are actually not missing.

 
I’ve generally rounded up or down to the closest whole number.

Kitchen Items

Item	Cost	Source	Receipt?	Comments
Blender	+$10	Walmart	Yes	Sale Price.
Coffee Maker	+$10	Future Shop	Yes	Sale Price.
Toaster	+$20	Future Shop	Yes	Sale Price.
Kettle	+$10?	??	N/A	Not Yet Replaced
Pizza Cutter	+$1	Dollar Store	No
Dish Drainer	+$9	Walmart	Yes
Microwave	-$50	Donated	N/A	I would have bought a very cheap microwave.
Pans	-$0	??	N/A	I would not have purchased extra pans.
Total	+$10

Furniture & Bedroom

Item	Cost	Source	Receipt?	Comments
Couch & Chair	-$0	??	N/A.	I would have used items found on the curb.
Wood Chest	-$10	??	N/A.	I would have found something old on kijiji.
Computer Desk	-$20	??	N/A.	I would have found something old on kijiji.
Bed	-$200?	??	N/A	I would have purchased a new bed, but cheap.
Blanket	+$25	Walmart	Yes
Hangars	+$10	Walmart	Yes
Total	-$150

Electronics

Item	Cost	Source	Receipt?	Comments
Keyboard	+$21	Walmart	Yes	.
Monitor	+$	??
Battery Charger	+	??	N/A.
~10 D Batteries	+	??	N/A
External CD Drive	+
USB Camera	+
VCR	+
Shure Mic	+
Two mini-cassette tape recorders	+			I only need one.
Four-Port Router	+
Computer Mic	+
Total

Items I would prefer returned

Item	Cost	Comments
Winston Electric Mandolin	+$	The Winston Electric Mandolin I had was an antique item and is not exactly replaceable. I would prefer the exact item to be returned. If this is not possible, I would need for it to be replaced.
12-String Ovation (with guitar stand)	+$	The 12-String Ovation I had was an antique item and is not exactly replaceable. I would prefer the exact item to be returned. If this is not possible, I would need for it to be replaced.
Wood Chess Board With Pieces	+$0	I played dozens and dozens, probably hundreds, of games of chess with my father on this board. It was an absolutely central part of my childhood. I was first given this item by my father in 2004. It was in my possession for nearly 10 years. I have no interest in a replacement board.
Game Theory Textbook	+$	I believe this was lent out.
Sheet Music	+$100	Much of this sheet music was marked up by me and it is the markups that I cannot replace. However, I can repurchase more music and start again. I suspect this may be with a number of piano books that had ended up in my possession. I don’t care about the piano books, but please give me back what is mine.
Total

Irreplaceable Personal Items

Item	Cost	Comments
Black and White Portrait of Me Drawn by an Ex-Partner	+$	This item was somehow destroyed. It can never be replaced. However, I have a scan of it and I would like to get it blown up. This is the replacement cost.
Nine Inch Nails Shirt	+$	Retired Shirt. I cannot repurchase the wear and memories, but I can wear it back down again.
John Lennon Shirt	+$	Retired Shirt. I cannot repurchase the wear and memories, but I can wear it back down again.
House of Guitars Shirt	+$	Retired Shirt. I cannot repurchase the wear and memories, but I can wear it back down again.
Genesis Tour Poster	+$10	I don’t know what happened to this. It can’t actually be replaced, but I can get a new poster.
Billy Corgan Guitar World Poster
Mogwai poster
Certificate of Provenance	+$	This was a signed artefact by the musicians in the band “coil”.
Total

Other Items

Item	Cost	Comments
School Bag	+$	I had an expensive hiking bag with a zipper problem.
Set of White JX-8P Keys	+$
Business Suit, with shirts	+$1000	This was purchased at Moore’s in 2007.
Total

Books

Item	Cost
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Communist Manifesto
IT
Brothers Karamazov
The Scarlett Letter
Heart of Darkness
Grapes of Wrath
The Republic
The Discourses (Machiavelli)
The Prince
Lady Oracle
Total

CDs

Item	Cost	Cost Estimate	Comments
Sold CDs re-purchased second hand	$120?	Partial Receipt	My father indicated repeatedly that he wanted me to have his CDs. What happened is entirely incomprehensible.
Cop shoot cop - release			Destroyed cover art
Cop Shoot Cop – White Noise			Out of print. Ebay Price. Destroyed cover art.
Einsturzende Neubauten – Silence Is Sexy			Destroyed packaging.
Einsturzende Neubauten – Tabula Rasa			Destroyed packaging.
Tool – A Thousand Days			Destroyed packaging.
The Art of Noise – The Ambient Collection			Disc not functioning.
The Smashing Pumpkins - Aeroplane Flies High Box Set			Box Disappeared.
Skinny Puppy – Rabies			Destroyed Cover Art.
Jello Biafra & The Melvins – Sieg Howdy			Destroyed Cover art.
Holst – the planets (rca classics, with Ralph Vaughn Williams piece)			Destroyed cover art.
The mars volta  - amputechture			Destroyed cover art
Einsturzende neubauten – perpetuum mobile			Destroyed packaging
The Electric Light Orchestra – No Answer			Destroyed Cover Art
Hater			Destroyed Cover Art
Django reinhardt  - swing 39
Alice In Chains – Tripod			Destroyed Cover Art
Alice In Chains – Nothing Safe			Destroyed Cover Art
Glenn branca – lesson no. 1			Destroyed cover art
The Cure – Disintegration			Destroyed cover art.
Total