ok. but that's why they used to teach greek philosophy. i guess, in the end, the two are so similar that it doesn't really matter...

"But in Chinese, the word for “mind” and “heart” are the same."

i can't remember which greek thinker realized we think with our mind (empodokles?), but he was overturning the view that we think with our heart. the poetic usage here is interesting, but the linguistics here are rooted in bad science.

"Recent research into neuroscience is confirming that the Chinese philosophers are correct:"

lol. no. you didn't understand what they meant. they meant to state that your heart is the centre of thought in your body, that it's where decisions are processed.

nor does the heart have anything to do with emotions. the brain, on the other hand, does.

i'm taking a step back from this now...

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/why-are-hundreds-of-harvard-students-studying-ancient-chinese-philosophy/280356/

i just want to point out that one of the more important things i learned from studying aristocracies is that the official genealogies are largely suggested by hierarchical realities. that is to say that the offspring of queens and other aristocratic females were not always also the offspring of their forced partners. it's hard to blame aristocratic women for this, given that marriage in this period was a sort of process of being sold into slavery.

the flip side of this is that male aristocrats weren't always willing to force themselves onto their assigned partners, either.

what the dna demonstrates is that there isn't a patrilineal relationship. that doesn't necessarily mean that these heads aren't the kings that they're thought to be. conversely, it could be that the living bourbons are not actually bourbons, genetically.

http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ejhg2013211a.html?WT.mc_id=FBK_NPG_EJHG_1310_KING

it was kind of a devastating moment when i realized that, actually. i spent a lot of time with that only to realize at the end that human beings are inherently promiscuous.

the flip side of this is easier to document: most powerful aristocrats had many children with women that were not their official partners.

they've done studies on this in the general population and the numbers are astounding. something like 30% of people are raised with fathers that they are not genetically related to.

all those kids that don't look like their fathers? the truth is....

historical questions aside, my interest lies more in determining a true carrying capacity surrounding a hypothetical shift to permaculture.

listen, there's only so much oil. we're going to have to reform our farming practices significantly. permaculture is one proposal.

the thing is that there are serious questions surrounding the ability of permaculture to actually produce. there's a sort of nightmare scenario of depopulation, warfare...

i like the idea of moving to hydroponic like arrangements where produce is grown indoors, perhaps with the aid of gmos that are not patented by mosanto. i realize that's sort of a heady pipe dream that relies on a high level of co-operation. permaculture is maybe more attainable.

but how many people can it actually feed?

http://www.nature.com/news/amazon-ecology-footprints-in-the-forest-1.13902?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews

the imf has been retreating from it's austerity position for a while now. the results have been horrific. and the math underlying their policies was wrong. i guess give them some credit for not being an entirely constructed body? for having a shred of integrity?

unfortunately, it's going to take a few years to reverberate, politically. fuck, decades, maybe...

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/11/international-monetary-fund-strongly-suggests-countries-tax-the-rich-to-fix-deficit/

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/12/eurp-o12.html

i think i'm starting to realize that yearning for a return to the simpler time invoked by 60s pop culture is the conservatism of the new generation, largely brought on by an influence from their grandparents.

it's really just a shift from 40s/50s imagery to 60s/70s imagery.

Google Account password changed

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Details on Closing your Discogs Account

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installation file:
touchpad.exe

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cardreader.exe

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product number.txt

a typical conversation with my psychotic mother

mom
How come you deleted my comments off your post? Or did you? I do think though that one needs a passport these days to get across the border....But, I may be wrong....

I finally broke up with "you know who"....I am afraid though.....I am almost afraid to even leave my place...But, I don't think he would strike so soon......If anything ever happens to me...It would be him, as he has threatened me on numerous occasions.......I just don't know how to handle this situation....Perhaps listing his name was not so smart, or maybe it was??......I just don't know what to do......

It could be him, or other(horrible characters) he knows....He has threatened me about them...But, I don't even know who "they" even are?

I have witnessed some insane behaviours(sp?what is the right spelling then) from him on numerous occasions....He is a very scarey man!

I think he may have keys to my apartment..Because when he left the other night, I locked the door promptly behind him, and when I got up the next morning....My door was unlocked!.......

Keys, that I NEVER EVEN GAVE HIM!.........

I guess the first thing, I should do, Is change my locks....I have two of them...

jessica amber murray
the spell check is american spelling. i never liked the guy at all, although we only met briefly. that's about all i can say. if changing your locks would make you feel better, you should do it.

mom
Yes... I will have to wait till next week to put the order in down at the main office here in my building...Although, I wonder if they would do it sooner...Prolly Not....I think it costs $100.00...Not Sure...Think so though....They(management) kinda think I am nuts already though...LOL....

Who cares what they even think at this point....If it will save my life or the contents inside here....

Yes, I know...Sounds a bit on the melodramatic side....But, I have been dealing with someone who is truly insane...I believe....

I am going to share something that might sound insane....But, on nights when he leaves here all angry and stuff...A dead prostitute shows up somewhere...Or goes missing....He used to make this horrible joke about putting a person in his septic tank.....That, that would be the best way of disposing of a body....

He has even claimed that alive ones were put in there!

He screamed at me that I knew too much!...Whatever that means??

jessica amber murray
that sounds really creepy, mom. if you have some information about missing prostitutes, or you think your life is in danger, you should really go to the police.

mom
Yes... I know...But he has threatened me with my life if I even mention the police...

jessica amber murray
btw, there are a number of 'normal' pieces of id that the border cops will accept. they'll even accept a parking card. i don't have anything like that, though. health card isn't listed. getting a passport should be easy, it says it takes ten days, so i'll go down on tuesday.

mom
And if I was to go to the police...What do you even think they will even do? They really are rather useless for the most part.....He even has police friends.....

jessica amber murray
i think that if you have evidence of a serious threat against you then you can put a restraining order on him and possibly get him tracked. i think you have to be pro-active in some sense, though. you can't just sit there and wait for him to come get you.

mom
I don't really have any evidence of any sort at all....

jessica amber murray
i mean, this guy isn't in the mafia or something is he....? hell's angels? if it's something like that, you're maybe right. you should maybe be thinking about finding a way to move. staying at nana's for a bit. i dunno. otherwise, it's probably the best choice.

if you claim he's threatened you, a judge might believe you. probably, even. it's a risk, sure. but, if the other risk is waiting around, i'd personally take the pro-active option.

mom
He's not hell's angels or mafia...But he claims that he knows people from this exact class of people....

He has mentioned names to me before...but I can't remember them...

Never thought I would have to..

jessica amber murray
those types of organizations are very professionally run. if you want to use that word. but you get the idea. they're businesses. the hell's aren't going to randomly hit somebody. it would put their operation in jeopardy. and if the boss found out somebody was fucking around like that, their own life might be in danger.

mom
He just has a really big mouth!....And I would just ignore what he was blithering about for the most part.....

jessica amber murray
in order for him to be able to follow through with a threat like that, he'd need to front some serious cash, and he'd have to find somebody that's on their way out. it sounds like he's bullshitting to me. still, it's hard not to take it seriously.

mom
He has money...

Stashed away....He is into all kinds of illegal shit!

He knows that I know this...

demo #8: boogeyman / depressed

listening to this all these years later has been sort of interesting. my influences on this track are really blatantly obvious...

it's actually a pop song. honestly. it's also maybe the only song in this collection where i give my age away clearly. this couldn't have been written by an adult.

the instrumental at the end is also something i spent many hours playing, by myself, and is also much older than 1996.

recorded in oct, 1996. remastered on oct 12, 2013.

demo #7: phased out / blue

this is actually two tracks, but one sort of functions as an intro to the other. sort of.

the instrumental beginning is something i used to play for hours at a time in my room by myself as a sort of calming mechanism. it's much older than this demo....

the second part is, lyrically, an obvious homage. again: i was 15. on the other hand, i think it captures my idiosyncratic sense of humour quite well. musically, it's a noisy, messy and yet catchy thing - one of my favourites in this group of tracks.

recorded in october, 1996. remastered on oct 12, 2013.

out of ideas for the shower

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

i've tried the things i know how to do and they haven't been successful.

i think i've narrowed it down to the drain, but don't know how to fix it beyond that. i don't know if it can be fixed without pulling it out.

i need to reiterate that it gets worse with each shower because the grout is slowly dissolving. at first it was only leaking near the toilet. now it's leaking near the front, and dangerously close to the kitchen. so, there's a factor of time involved in fixing it.

j

not exactly a smoking gun. but this general idea is not new, and it's probably mostly right.
http://uk.prweb.com/releases/2013/10/prweb11201273.htm

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/11/budg-o11.html
http://canadiandimension.com/articles/5580/
http://www.nature.com/news/diamond-drizzle-forecast-for-saturn-and-jupiter-1.13925?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/11/worse_than_nixon_committee_to_protect
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/10/desert_fury_egypt_sinai
https://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_GreatUnwind_policybrief_RosenbergKahl.pdf
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/10/truth-in-the-age-of-niallism/280507/

what is the synthetic oil made from?
http://phys.org/news/2013-10-arizona-solar-hours-sun.html

i applaud the move towards empiricism, but i think the question they need to be asking is about whether the idea still makes sense in a globalized economy focused on cheap labour.
http://mitne.ws/GTmJb4

http://phys.org/news/2013-10-device-self-biased-solar-hydrogen-microbial.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=beeing-there-the-search-for-pesticides-effect-on-declining-bee-colonies-moves-to-the-fields&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
http://www.physicstoday.org/daily_edition/politics_and_policy/a_muted_milestone_for_the_national_ignition_facility\

this article made me laugh. it's just base tribalism, playing off the different abrahamic frauds against each other. what's she trying to do, start a jihad?

perhaps she should have spent some time analyzing how power creates and cultures christianity, rather than play right into the division strategy. yet, when your brain has already been conquered by religion, such abstractions may remain out of reach.

http://rabble.ca/columnists/2013/10/islamophobia-or-anti-muslim-sentiment-uncovering-roots-anti-muslim-discourse

so, you know you're not free, and you're struggling to be free....

....but what would you do if you *were* free?

it was always about containing russia and china. it's not a shift in policy so much as the launch of a new objective. once assad is removed from power, the americans will have control over all of the former soviet allies in the region (iraq, libya, syria). i think they're going to stop with syria, though. i don't think invading iran is possible....or at least it isn't at the moment....

the next stage is africa, and it's going to be more violent as the proxies are more developed. the americans will want to contain the conflict. how long before china figures out that their better strategy is escalation?

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19349-old-game-new-obsession-new-enemy-now-its-china

the other message inbox. just checked it for the first time in a while...

some spam. expected. but the kind of messages that randoms send off out of nowhere, like, i just don't get it. just trying to flip it around, like, could i ever ever ever see myself just randomly suggesting a bdsm hookup to a total stranger over facebook? not that i'm into that in the first place (definitely not), but the sheer gall required to actually make that request is just.....

maybe it's just more evidence that i am not a member of your species.

some of them are sort of cute and funny. no, i don't think i'm going to iran any time soon, but i appreciate the compliment.

most of them, though, are just......i don't understand how people can actually have the nerve for this.....

deleting 95% of my facebook "friends"

i actually deleted almost everybody, so don't feel singled out. the list is down to family (or people that are practically family) and people that i feel post content that i find to be interesting. it's just a handful of people.

it's not really personal, it's mostly about moving on and leaving the past behind. chances are that i just decided i wasn't interested in what you were posting and didn't really want to read it anymore. so, chances are that i don't dislike you, and that wasn't the reason i deleted you. it's just that the past is the past and i'd like to place it there explicitly.

however, i've also come to learn that the vast majority of people in this world have broken hearts. by that, what i mean is that they are fundamentally broken people. broken by a system, perhaps, but jaded to the point where they are fundamentally unable to be 'good'. they may not even realize that, or how their views and actions have been so deeply shaped by the paradigms of neo-liberalism. the optimist in me wants to believe that we can all work through this together, that the solution is some kind of group therapy, but the realist in me understands that the vast majority of people are simply too far gone. i've come to understand that 'friends' are consequently more often liabilities than assets, and that nobody can ever really be trusted in our society beyond a very base level. i've been burned, pretty hard, and need to take the initiative to stay away from people that i'm convinced will eventually stab me in the back. think of it as preventive action.

i have my feed set for public updates. it's set up that way because i'm not opposed to people subscribing, or people i've deleted continuing to read my feed. if you don't want to continue receiving my posts, you can click the little rotated > in the corner of the post and choose to hide all updates from me. alternatively, you could block and unblock me.

i wish people luck in the future. i just want to get away from the past.

i'll remind people that i'm on odsp for ptsd and, whether the diagnosis is rigorous or not, there's no question that i had a profound mental breakdown that was largely driven by a reaction to how other people discarded me. i'm still struggling with how to cope with that, and how to adjust, but i remain convinced, looking back, that i ignored a lot of warning signs under the misguided hope that goodness of heart would prevail in the end. i may be overcompensating, but i can't risk triggering myself backwards, and i request that people simply respect my decision in the context of me feeling it's a necessary step to maintaining my mental health. i feel i can get out now largely unscathed and without collapsing into any sort of episode. just respect that, please.

i'm surprised - i finally found an example of zizek saying something of substance, and it turns out i even agree with him, and for the right reasons.

badiou's preposterous attempt to seek absolute truth through the use of set theory is indeed a hare-brained exercise in bankrupt kantian idealism. for, as kant was rambling away about the perfection of geometry, gauss (at least according to the popular mythology, it was gauss) was demonstrating it's arbitrary nature. badiou seems to have missed the memo.

what's missing in this presentation is a discussion of hilbert and russell and why the deductions of mathematics are only as valuable as the axioms underlying them. so, first badiou must prove his axioms. cue godel...

badiou actually has the gall to talk of deciding the undecidable. it's reckless absurdity, and can only be met seriously with a laugh.

(link apparently lost)

so, this sort of reads off like somebody sourcing my anti-work rants. i should park this somewhere for future use...

i should point out that these are not at all the sources i'd actually cite.

http://jacobinmag.com/2012/04/the-politics-of-getting-a-life/

maybe a theme, actually. this provides a better argument against work than for it. i think it realizes that, too.

http://libcom.org/blog/meaningful-work-appeal-young-08102013

"progress"

not really, though

Re: shower again, and check

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

just an update on this...

i think i've been able to determine it *is* the drain and it *isn't* the pipe. the experiment that i did was that i dumped pot after pot after pot of water into the drain. this reproduced the problem of water under the platform (i could tell by pushing on it and hearing it squish). i stopped before i created a leak, but that was enough to convince me of the nature of the problem.

i've also observed water draining into the crack around the drain. in fact, the crack seems to fill up and then spill over into the drain. i don't think it should be doing that, so i'm going to seal it tomorrow. i don't want to seal in moisture. i'll let you know if that works.

i have a good feeling about this working. if it doesn't work, i'm going to have to agree that ripping it apart would be necessary. that would really reduce the problem to a drain issue under the platform.

but i'm confident i've ruled out pipes. that's good news.

j

enjoying the new night birds record

this is something else i probably would have written a review of back in july if i was living on this planet at the time.



the reason night birds are so refreshing is indeed nostalgic. this was one of my favourite sounds growing up. it basically doesn't exist anymore. finding these guys sorting through reviews a few years ago was like coming face to face with a leprechaun.

i just need to point out again that 'dry' and 'boring' are relative terms. i find most mainstream media to be boring - it's just all about twisted perceptions of sex and money. i find competition to be boring, yet others make it the central focal point of their existence. people could try and be a little less normative in their analysis.

well, ok. 'boring' does have an objective meaning. i'll use it in music reviews to talk about things that are uneventful, repetitive, meandering...

it's not used that way very often, though. it's usually just a close-minded insult that equates differences in interest with inferiority. it's a very arrogant term to throw around.

rather than say "you're boring", why not say "we have differing interests"? i'll tell you why - it's some kind of disdain. it's usually not fair to direct that at other people...

just realize that, most of the time, the feeling is mutual.

just to clarify: it used to be that there were proxy wars happening in libya and syria, and a revolution happening in egypt, and an uprising happening on the peninsula, and that these things weren't actually related. with all the manipulation behind the scenes, egypt has been reduced to another proxy conflict.

(well, libya and syria were related, and the uprising on the peninsula took inspiration from egypt. but they're three separate things.)

http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/09012013/article/genetic-studies-reveal-ancient-makeup-of-modern-european-populations

http://chomsky.info/interviews/20131010.htm

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/false-equivalence-that-leans-on-public-opinion-is-still-false-equivalence/280448/

http://metronews.ca/news/vancouver/820463/vancouver-mulls-how-to-get-rid-of-fossil-fuel-investments/
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/09/no_country_for_anyone_syria
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/10/10/changes-allowing-ontario-to-handover-of-crown-land-to-companies-snuck-into-liberal-budget-watchdog/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/10/obamacare-worse-than-doing-nothing/

so, i'm still trying to unravel this, and it's constantly shifting.

if the coup was backed by the ksa, and there's this struggle going on between the ksa and qatar, this suggests the whitehouse taking the side of qatar in preparation for....

...for what. fuck. LEAVE EGYPT ALONE.

we'll have to see how syria lines up. the thing is that playing them off against each other isn't incoherent.....

there's always the left-field possibility that the policy is actually transparent. but, the idea of the united states coercing a foreign power into democracy is sort of hard to take at face value.

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/10/3_months_after_morsi_coup_hundreds

this is worth reading, as a case study. i've perceived a lot of similar things, and heard a lot of push back, but this is one of the more clear examples i've seen somebody articulate. the intentions may have been just (if scientifically unsound), and it's not abused by everybody that talks in these terms, but when you hear the language of critical race theory coming from white people, it's often being used as a way to mask racist beliefs and racist actions. it's a type of crypto-racism, or socially acceptable racism, put through this hyper-orwellian filter.

well, read the article.

my comments...

"Too often, the IFs assume the inferiority of those who are PoC/female/gay etc which is in itself racist/sexist and homophobic. More so, by making assumptions prior to knowing someone, they ignore the complexities of humans and human relationships."

this is the crux of my issue. she's describing something she's experienced, but it's not really fair to assign those characteristics to other people with the same views. there's no logic there. this, on the other hand, is a good point, and a scary one.

more concerning to me is that it seems as though it often functions as a mask for actual racism. all of a sudden, it's ok to argue for racial purity or for segregation (albeit using different jargon) - from the left. sometimes, i think this follows from a level of naivete or a level of emotional repression. but i've met people who i think are actually deeply racist and just hide behind the language to justify that racism.

if people are curious, the internet is saturated with essays like this by supposedly "unprivileged" people. the unpeople. i've read quite a few. the commonality is a feeling that the boundaries being placed around them are artificial, and a sort of desire to push back against it.

http://melissa-fix.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/privileged-problems.html

installation file:
MIDIGuitar32.exe

installation file:
MIDIGuitar32.dll

installation file:
JamOrigin_KeyGen.exe

this seems to suggest the plausible hypothesis that the united states is selling egypt to saudi arabia. to speak crudely.

is that 'decolonization'? well, 'decolonization' was always somewhat of a misleading term. 'consolidation' maybe captures what actually happened better.

it fits the narrative of obama fulfilling the ww1 era promise of helping construct a united arab state, anyways. which is what al qaeda was really all about. i think there's a lot of truth to that narrative.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10857

i like pam's politics. she has a sense of sincerity that is rare. but, unfortunately, she's sputtering underneath the evidence in front of her. but i think she's equipped to come to terms with it, eventually.

i think there's something to be said about the co-modification of dissent and i think it's a necessary consequence of the tactics being used. there's been much said about the use of social media or media in general. i think there's been less analysis regarding how people interact with media.

i think everybody understands the whole deconstruction of advertising, how it works on a subconscious level....and more importantly how easily it's co-opted.

activists have been jumping from one cause to the next, driven by the media that was supposed to be to their great advantage. it seems like it's less that activists have raised awareness using twitter and more that political dissent has been reduced to a type of fashion as a result of it taking over twitter. some kind of systemic analysis here is worthwhile.

idle no more? that went out of style a few months ago.

that speech could have been produced, verbatim, at an occupy (insert city) movement about a year ago. same issues. same approaches.

so, it is now the responsibility of social theorists to sit down and study the data regarding these movements and try and figure out some patterns. to me, it's obvious: viral marketing has a high initial return driven by the way it converts ideas into trends (and that kind of support is dependent upon it being a trend), followed by a slow slide into obscurity defined by the trend going out of fashion.

conclusion: this isn't a smart approach. it just leads to movements getting burnt out, exploited and co-opted.

as soon as it got to twitter, it became fashion.

as soon as it became fashion, it became temporary.

it's a systemic problem, one so profound it's enough to throw your arms up in the air and give up. you can't get their attention *unless* you use viral marketing techniques. yet, doing so *necessitates* that they'll abandon you by the next marketing strategy.

so, the bastards win.

well, maybe there's two hopes.

the first is deprogramming people. i've read very little foucault. the guy was a fascist, he just pisses me off. but, if you can capture them with a viral technique and then turn them off...

the biggest problem would be keeping them turned off. i've barely watched any tv over the last 15 years. i'm fully cognizant of the reality that my entire perception of existence would change dramatically if i opened myself back up to that kind of suggestive mind control.

the second is to somehow keep spitting out more and more effective viral hooks. but this is hard to contemplate, given that the competition is endless.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/10/03/pq_stung_by_jacques_parizeaus_rebuke_of_values_charter_hbert.html
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/09/budg-o09.html
http://fpif.org/jellification-politics/
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/08/president-clintons-close-colleague-joins-us-oil-sands-board/
http://truth-out.org/news/item/19287-in-conversation-with-noam-chomsky-on-us-politics-global-affairs-and-capitalist-reform

i would expect this to come up in my feed. it didn't.
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1nxtyb/nuclear_fusion_milestone_passed_at_us_lab/

http://warrenkinsella.com/2013/10/gary-mchale-crowd-sourcing-a-lawsuit/
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/09/apec-o09.html
http://fpif.org/nsa-isnt-foiling-terrorist-plots/
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19323-it-is-time-to-recognize-the-national-sovereignty-and-human-rights-of-native-indians

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/sheila-block/2013/10/its-not-just-ontarios-youth-on-minimum-wage
http://truth-out.org/news/item/19296-empire-under-obama-part-1-political-language-and-the-mafia-principles-of-international-relations

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/08/campaign-against-fossil-fuel-growing
http://libcom.org/blog/meaningful-work-appeal-young-08102013
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/09012013/article/brooch-of-tutankhamun-holds-evidence-of-ancient-comet
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/02/dangerous-radioactivity-fracking-waste-pennsylvania

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/09/17/justin_trudeau_taps_toronto_centre_candidate_chrystia_freeland_for_economic_advice.html

this is a far more important event regarding shifts the country may take over the next generation than any election or protest....
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/paul-desmarais-remembered-as-visionary-entrepreneur-with-great-influence-1.1931144

http://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2013/01/16/the-messy-link-between-slave-owners-and-modern-management/

http://jacobinmag.com/2013/10/what-does-obama-think-they-were-doing-at-stonewall/
http://rabble.ca/news/2013/10/sensible-bc-takes-big-strides-campaign-to-decriminalize-marijuana

brave, but rather foolish.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10846

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/09/pers-o09.html
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/10/08-7
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/companies-that-use-bribes-abroad-rarely-prosecuted-at-home-1.1929649
http://jacobinmag.com/2012/04/the-politics-of-getting-a-life/

i've seen a few experiments like this recently. good to see that the technology is catching up to the point where we can finally study this properly.
http://www.nature.com/news/physicists-snatch-a-peep-into-quantum-paradox-1.13899?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews

mostly a summary of the higgs ramifications, but also the first article i've seen that hints at what i've been saying: by conforming so perfectly to the standard model, the higgs result is actually essentially debunking it.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=could-the-higgs-nobel-be-the-end-of-particle-physics&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=cosmic-strings-cracked-cosmos&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
http://www.nature.com/news/two-laser-boron-fusion-lights-the-way-to-radiation-free-energy-1.13914
http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v19/n10/full/nm1013-1204.html

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/pamela-palmater/2013/10/defer-deflect-deny-destroy-harper%E2%80%99s-first-nation-education-ac

as somebody who has voted liberal more than once solely because i was concerned about funny ndp economic positions, i have to state that i'm a little confused. linda mcquaig strikes me as a pretty good representative of "modern liberal' economics. strangely, the liberal party's response was to hire somebody that seems to be to her right.

silly conservative rhetoric aside, economics was always the liberals' strong point. people knew better than to listen to the foolishness coming from the conservatives (which always led to tough economic times, and broken budgets), and the naivete coming from the ndp which would no doubt lead to a systemic collapse in ways that maybe people weren't really interested in. the liberals were the only party that made any sense in the economic sphere. it's the reason they won so often.

but, recently, it seems like that's been shifting. nowadays, the liberals seem to be as stupid as the conservatives when it comes to economics, and the ndp have really moved into the place the liberals were in.

the conclusion is that the people that would have previously had the good sense to keep the liberals in power should be voting for the ndp. but, whether that happens or not is another question.

i think the vast majority of liberal voters in that riding, and any other, would prefer linda.

so, what does that say of justin's decision, here? both on the level of his ability to make decisions (this is a very stupid decision) and on his ideological persuasion?

in truth, those are empty questions. he didn't pick chrystia freeland, and the people that did picked her to teach him about a topic he knows almost nothing about.

there's no clothes on this guy.

i missed this back in july, amidst all of the kerfuffle. it's sort of big news.

next step? hopefully? criminal charges, under the war crimes act. this has to be the end point.

a negligence case may get some compensation out to the victims, but this sort of thing doesn't act as a useful deterrent because most of the negligence is actual criminal. what ends up happening is that the companies work the cost of rape and genocide into their analysis. what also happens is that they finish the job. if leaving a survivor behind in the village is going to cost them, there will be less survivors. the cost of being "caught committing genocide" works it's way into whether or not developing this field or that mine is profitable. this is the logic of capital, and if the aim is to find ways to contain and regulate it then we need to move beyond liberal naivete.

i wrote an essay about a year ago explaining that there actually isn't any need to rewrite the laws relating to jurisdiction. the war crimes act (http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-45.9/) has the proper jurisdiction to convict upper management of genocide, rape and the other accusations. it's technically international law, even; that's just the version that was passed as domestic law. the state just isn't using it....

http://dominion.mediacoop.ca/story/end-impunity/18874

right. but, when the democrats were doing similar things in response to iraq was it not clear it was a ploy? the tea party doesn't like war because it interprets it as a waste of tax money. it doesn't like foreign aid, either, for the same reason. or the united nations. or...

that's not peace, or at least it isn't in a co-operative sense. it's just a type of self-interest. this doesn't offer an actual movement to rally around, it just leaves the landscape littered with the bodies of submerged ostriches. if there's a task for progressives, there, it is to try and pull all of those heads out of their own rears....

(special care should be taken to avoid accidental impregnation, as that may lead to an unnecessary debate. my point is transparent.)

nor is this as new as the article points out, so much as it's a return to historical norms. the architects of america's war have generally been democrats; republicans have generally opposed that worldly vision in favour of a more insular one. the term isolationism may bring to mind ron paul, but the idea is as old as the country. i suppose it's greatest victory was rendering the league of nations useless. and it's a very republican idea. barry goldwater isn't as much fun to rally around as ron paul, though.

....even though they're equally racist. again, that's a debate. should avoid that.

i wouldn't expect this little tea party uprising to be any more formative on the next republican administration than cindy sheehan has been on the existing one.

mr. cameron, likewise, has his own racist reactionaries to pander to, lest the fucking ukip work their way into coalition. they don't like war, either. sooooo many debates...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/09/peace-is-no-longer-a-partisan-issue/

Freeland, I should point out, is no Marxist, and although conceding to him one or two minor points, she is still very much of the opinion that capitalism is "the best prosperity-creating system humanity has come up with so far", as she has said in the financial blog she writes for Reuters.

The bad thing about that is that she will not countenance any kind of socialism (let alone, as I occasionally do in my darker moments, fantasise about the gutters of Mayfair running red with the blood of the plutocrats). The good thing is that she knows how to speak to and about the situation without the red mist descending. It also means she is listened to by these people, and they talk to her unguardedly.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/08/plutocrats-rise-new-global-super-rich-review

"But $1 billion added to the domestic economy through tax cuts to promote personal consumption (like the payroll tax holiday) adds 15,100 jobs."

that never actually happens, though, because most of the money ends up in savings accounts or paid down as debt (and i'd expect the share going to debt is so high at this point that tax cuts are basically banker handouts). to the extent that jobs are created in retail or whatever, it's short term and cyclical....

it's cursory to the argument, which i concur with.

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19292-ask-a-keynesian-with-us-borrowing-capped-wont-more-pentagon-spending-destroy-jobs

"In fact, getting liberals and progressives to heartily endorse health care ‘reform’ designed by the right-wing Heritage Foundation with the intent of precluding universal health care ties to the decades old move rightward by ‘liberal’ Democrats under the guise of pragmatism."

i'll never get over this. it may be the pinnacle of the process of brainwashing.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/09/burning-down-the-house-3/

i've been watching this spider here for several hours, now. it's been crawling around me every which way, over ceilings, behind canvasses and apparently along axes that i'm simply too primitive to comprehend. could it be hunting me? naw...

it's just looking for somewhere to park a corner web to catch little insects. i don't mind a spider or two. i've seen grosser bugs down here (what are those goofy ones that tumble around, over-enthusiastically, anyways? they remind me of retrievers, sort of. some kind of centipede, i think. but they're built like hyperactive, bouncing squares. i'm always suppressing a giggle, and then they get away.), and if the spiders can help with that then that's a good thing. if they get out of hand, in comes the vacuum, but one or two at a time is fine.

then, why does it seem like this web is going to be roughly five by five? feet, that is.

fortunately, the spider seems a little confused about my movement. let alone about my weight. see, it seems to think i'm likely to throw myself directly into the wall. well, i guess it throws itself directly into the wall. it's just relating it's own experiences the way that it knows how. perhaps? what else can explain a five by five web in the middle of a wall?

so, i'm debating my strategies, here. i have to admit i'm a little irked about my perceived role as a food source. fucking eight-eyes. yet, i admire the thing's sheer insolence.

mom
I don't mind a small spider or 2...But the centipedes give me the creepy crawlies!

jessica amber murray 
they're too hilarious. i want to toss a frisbie at one....

mom
Well... I have had one or two crawl up my jean pant leg in the past...Yikes!

jessica amber murray
ok, do you mean the big square ones? i don't mean the long ones. i don't think they're actually centipedes, but i think they're related to centipedes.

mom
It was the long thin brownish ones covered with legs and they are fast!... Not sure what the big square ones are?

jessica amber murray
yeah, that's not what i mean. those are just yick. i mean these awkward looking things that really have four big legs. when they run, they're constantly just off balance enough to make it look like they're going to fall over.

they sort of gallop.

it's hilarious.

mom
LOL...If you say so...

jessica amber murray
i'm generally ok with bugs. the only really freaky moment i can recall is the time i got attacked by a praying mantis. and those things are actually huge. i don't know if you've ever seen one - first and last time i have.

mom
No...But one time a walking stick was on my arm and kinda freaked me out....

jessica amber murray
i was coming home very early in the morning from a party, and it flew in the door when i opened up, sat on the ground for a second, and then lunged itself at me. i got my arm up in time to knock it down, which also smashed it into the wall. i panicked and went after it with a frying pan...

it was at least a foot long. i thought it was a bird at first...

mom
OMG! Yikes!

jessica amber murray
worse, was nobody believed me. dad just laughed at me and told me to stop doing so many drugs. then, a few years later when i saw a shrew in the basement (and i know the difference between a shrew and a mouse, thank you), it was just like i got attacked by the praying mantis and i should stop doing psychedelics...

(it's important because most shrews are poisonous, so you don't want to treat them like mice!)

the one that went after me was bright, lime, glowing green.

i don't know if this guy realizes that thing is poisonous. i find most people don't know this. i spent too many hours reading biology books as a kid, i guess.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/2013/10/06/the-lustful-human-animal-cultural-differences-in-sexual-harm-and-consent/?WT.mc_id=SA_facebook

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/2013/10/03/scientist-interview-implanted-electrodes-reboot-brain-out-of-intractable-depression?WT.mc_id=SA_MindFacebook

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=oxytocin-hormone&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook

it could b a major media event....but every country knows every other country is spying on them. it's not 1947.
http://o.canada.com/news/canada-csec-brazil-mining-energy-spying/

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/un-fact-finder-arrives-in-canada-to-survey-concerns-of-aboriginal-peoples-226662801.html

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/07/where-war-reporting-goes-wrong/
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/07/egy-o07.html

Jessica Amber Murray
sssssssssoooooooooo, i guess you found somebody else to talk to. probably more healthy. fwiw, i'm currently sleeping in the afternoons/evenings. it took a long time to respond because i was sleeping from around noon to around 7:00. but that's in constant flux, likely to change within a few days....

Shelly Teagan
That is so ridic

No i didnt find anyone to talk to

Just havent had tine to respond

Its all like a bunch of dudes all the time

And confusing mah brain

Shelly Teagan
JESSICA I AM SO OVERWHELMED WITH EMOTION

WE NEED TO HAVE GIRL TALKS

IMMEDIATELY

do you have skype? ? ? ?

Jessica Amber Murray
i don't. i suppose i could get it. but then i'd lose the comfort that comes with a block on actual physical appearance. it would be "give me an hour, so i can get ready for skype". which strikes me as sort of surreal. what's up?

debussy’s wheelchair, on fire (uploaded)

Your Facebook Page has been scheduled for deletion

From: "Facebook" notification+k-huidvd@facebookmail.com
To: "Jessica Amber Murray" jessicaambermurray@gmail.com

http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/neo-nazis-are-attacking-anti-racist-activists-in-calgary

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/07/afri-o07.html

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/07/canadas-petro-government/

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10664

http://transitions.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/10/07/will_the_american_special_op_in_libya_hurt_the_embattled_government_in_tripoli

obviously.

so, to keep the government in check, we should rely on an armed milit...

why are you laughing?

ok. maybe a different tactic is required. they talk about the militarized state as the result of a collapsing economy. yet, only a collapsing economy can provide the context for the right kind of resistance.

leave the guns to the thugs. instead, go quit your job.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/07/is-homeland-security-preparing-for-the-next-wall-street-collapse/

window.doc

(edit: this was written in the late 00s, and saved in this file to this date for unknown reasons. 27/08/2019)

there's a window company. and the window business is a little bit slow right now. so, they're trying to find ways to increase business.

they decide that the problem is that there are too many functional windows out there, and the only way to increase sales is to correct that problem. yet, that's sort of criminal. the government, with it's regulations....always getting in the way of business...

so, they needed to find a way to accomplish this without making it seem illegal. but, it turned out the window company was unpopular due to weak acknowledgement of the relevant environmental regulations. see, what you can do if you're a catastrophically polluting company is calculate whether the cost of modifying your business practices is more or less efficient than the government red tape. of course, if it costs less to destroy a community than it does to sustain it, it would be irresponsible to sustain it.

but, they have a common enemy with their detractors: government. well, sort of. it's not really possible to speak of a common entity in this context, but it's vague enough to be effective. this is how the people are assembled.

the next step in the scheme is to infiltrate the group with employees, union members, to get the idea of window smashing normalized, to implant a logical, causal connection between anger at systemic oppression and breaking somebody's window - solution obtained.

but, will it work? and what will become of the people living under the shadow of the reconstruction firms, whose anger only makes their oppressor stronger?

platonic climate.doc

(edit: this was written in the late 00s, and saved in this file to this date for unknown reasons. 27/08/2019)

i've spent a lot of time online arguing about climate change over the years and i'm convinced that what we need is somebody to write a platonic dialogue on the topic, something that's easy to understand. something like this...

grasshopper: climate change is just natural variation. did you know it was warmer on the earth millions of years ago?

socrates: yes, i'm aware that the global mean temperature of the earth has been much higher in the distant past. so, yes the earth was warmer in the past. do you know *why*?

grasshopper: no.

socrates: it was because the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide was higher back then.

grasshopper: oh. well, what happened to all of that carbon?

socrates: over time, it became trapped within the earth due to various processes. one of the larger was the means of it being trapped by organisms, who slowly turn into oil over millions of years when they die. when the carbon became trapped in the earth, the climate got cooler.

grasshopper: so, when we burn the oil, we're releasing the carbon back into the atmosphere and recreating the conditions from millions of years ago.

socrates: i think that is correct.

grasshopper: you are wise.

socrates: if i actually thought i was wise, i'd be a fucking idiot you bloody noob.

boxer.doc

(edit: this was written in the late 00s, and saved in this file to this date for unknown reasons. 27/08/2019)

so, there's this random person just somewhere out in the world that is heard to mutter the phrase "i'm more liberal than barbara boxer.". somebody thinks it's humorous, so they repeat it to somebody else, and before long it's blown up in the media and everybody in the world knows that this little pleb that nobody had ever heard of before had the gall to claim that they could possibly be more liberal than barbara boxer.

at first, barbara boxer was coy. they hoped everybody would forget and it would just blow over. eventually, they were issuing "no comment.". barbara was said to be "on vacation" and unable to respond to these claims for nearly a week thereafter, once it was clear that she had a challenger and was going to have to respond.

the decision was made that barbara was to take the news light-heartedly. she would approach the situation with the feel of a game of croquet, with a gentlewomanly attitude of fair sport.

the pleb, meanwhile, didn't expect this to happen. it was just a casual remark made with no desire to upset anyone and no thought of any consequences. there was no desire on the plebs part to compete with anybody and there never had been, but there was a sense of mischief, a sense of enjoying the role of the troublemaker and a bit of a twisted amount of joy in watching events turn out as planned. i guess it's almost like treating reality with the same detachment you would have to a video game.

when the video game turned real there was nothing but a sense of fear. wait a second.....this.....can't....happen....it's.....not....real...! the, the tyrannosaurus rex is coming out of the...the..tv....

nonetheless, here is what was happening, barbara boxer was issuing that she was willing to meet all challengers in terms of liberalness and has devised a set of tests that can be used as metrics of liberalness between the two participants.

the pleb had no idea. nobody really knew the pleb all that well or even where the pleb lived, nobody knew how to get in contact and inform the pleb that there had been a response. the pleb didn't pay attention to the media enough to recognize what was occurring. eventually, the message was transported.

it wasn't until the decision had been made that the epiphany occurred and the monster jumped out of the screen, initiating a survivalist response.

"ok, barbara boxer, i know that i've taken you on in this fictitious challenge to the title of High Liberal. but, my creation of the system of competition was produced as a means of ridiculing that system, certainly the prospect of the idea of barbara boxer taking on a pleb for the title of "most liberal" is sufficiently comical, and hence did so in the defense of a future attack on liberalism that has yet to come. your response of actually choosing to actively compete against me indicates an actual attachment to competition, which makes you much less liberal than me. of course, that makes me guilty of setting a trap, which would be unfair. but, your response of condemnation would be the last straw. my choice to be free thinking and make my own decisions makes me the more liberal in the face of your attempt to condemn me. this is a more sufficient metric than the tests you have devised and i would prefer to leave it at that and walk away."

it was deemed by the judges (comedy central) that this response undoubtedly crowned the pleb as most liberal and he was abducted from his home, drugged, and forced to parade before the cameras. he became a huge star.

barbara's career was over, as she was pushed out of the house and onto a cushy, seven figure job on the board of the parent company. she wrote two books and had a wonderful harem.

http://www.nature.com/news/african-genes-tracked-back-1.13607?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews

i've shared this five or six times. the idea really fascinates me, when taken to more extreme levels, as an explanation for some really twisted shit. and, is the government working on it's own parasite?
http://www.nature.com/news/parasite-makes-mice-lose-fear-of-cats-permanently-1.13777

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/i-had-five-sons-now-i-have-four-syrias-senior-cleric-pardons-the-rebels-who-killed-his-son-8835441.html

so, umm, it seems like fisk has it figured out.

the sarin attack seems to have been launched by qatar-linked rebels, by way of libya. makes sense.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/gas-missiles-were-not-sold-to-syria-8831792.html

the regime's response has been rather befuddled from the beginning, as though they can't believe anybody thinks they'd be so reckless and stupid. basically, the syrian government finds the accusation insulting.

i'm really taken aback by the nature of the idlenomore event tomorrow, and am not really sure how to interpret it. should i be finding it hard to *believe* that the organizers are uncritically repeating a colonial history of their own oppression? the correct information is not obscure, at this point. when i was researching this, i was able to easily find critical, anti-colonial histories in the library - at carleton, which isn't exactly the best library. in fact, the fucking wikipedia page is enough to tear down the statist propaganda underlying the action. so, it's really hard to *believe* that they're "too colonized to know their own history".

is it a conscious attempt to reclaim history? well, i can get behind that in theory, but the way to do that is to point out the actual motives of the colonial regime, not to naively play into their tricks. this strikes me as more likely, but it's entirely disingenuous. it relies on the ignorance of the audience, and i find that both disturbing and insulting. i can get behind a correction of history, but i can't get behind a process of rewriting it to suit the current needs of a dominant or marginalized group. that's scary, orwellian shit is what that is.

so, i'm just going to suggest that you take the time to read up on what the proclamation actually was. later court documents have used the proclamation as an excuse to award land claims, but it was actually the exact opposite of a recognition of sovereignty - it was a unilateral declaration by the british crown that all the areas that the french had claimed exclusive trade rights to would come under the ownership of the british king, and that all the people that lived in those areas (indigenous, french or otherwise) would become british subjects. a large area was split off as "indian hunting grounds", but this was not a recognition of sovereignty so much as it was a tactic to avoid land speculators from selling the land to other european powers. the arrangement the french had was a trade arrangement. so, conquering the french wouldn't automatically give britain control of the land outside of the garrisons. there was nothing preventing indigenous groups from selling their land to the french or the spanish, or to american settlers. that's what the proclamation meant to address. what it did was declare that indigenous land could only be sold to the king. what kind of sovereignty is that? it's not sovereignty, it's a type of feudal claim of lordship over the area.

so, i don't know what this is really about underneath the banners, but do please educate yourself before you go out there and celebrate the day that indigenous people lost their land to a unilateral declaration by the british monarch.

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