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Live performance by Bloc Party

Breaking: Albert Hofmann, discoverer of LSD, allegedly dead

Hot off the presses...if its true...

More as I get it.


Edit 1

As of yet, no official confirmation. However, those who spoke with him in the last few months said he was not in good health at all.


Edit 2

Still no confirmation...however the rumour has spread fast. The Wikipedia entry has had to be reverted several times since there is nothing more than rumour at the moment...the story has also spread to sites like Deathlist, Shroomery and God Like Productions (where, humourously, someone tried to use Wikipedia as proof of his still uncomfirmed death).


Edit 3

Boing Boing has also reported this....though as of yet, still no confirmation. Speculation on Livejournal too, though still nothing positive.


Edit 4

Echoes and Mirrors is alleging this is a hoax. While no new evidence is put forward, the lack of evidence, and the time lapse since the initial claim is making this look more and more likely.


Edit 5

On the other hand...apparently he IS dead. According to Seattle's Stranger:

There’s uncertainty on teh nets whether Hoffman’s passing is just a rumor. However, a call to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies confirms he died last night in his home in Basel, Switzerland.

Also, according to his Wikipedia article:

Rick Doblin of MAPS has claimed that Hofmann died at 9am from a heart attack.

But according to a Wikipedia editor I spoke to just recently, Rick Doblin was unaware of this only a couple of hours ago, and the comment is not sourced. So we have at least one source now...but I'd like another independent source to confirm. Just to make sure.


Edit 6

I Love Bonnie.net has another piece confirming Hofmann's death. The email from Rick Doblin can be found here.

“Albert died at home at 9 AM Basel time from a myocardial infarction, quick and relatively painless. Two caretakers were there with him at the time. The only people who were told were people from Burg, the village where he lived, and Peter and others were surprised the word of his death had gotten out so quickly. It’s the age of the internet…

Albert had been increasingly thinking of death these last few months. He had stopped leaving his home, where he said he could feel the spirit of Anita, his wife who died December 20, 2007. He didn’t come to the World Psychedelic Forum a month ago, but did entertain some visitors at his home. We spoke on the phone the day after the Basel conference and he was happy and fulfilled. He’d seen the renewal of LSD psychotherapy research with his own eyes, as had Anita. I said that I looked forward to discussing the results of the study with him in about a year and a half and he laughed and said he’d try to help the research however he could, either from this side or “the other side”.”

So I believe thats it. Goodbye, Dr Hofmann.

War Nerd interview

As I'm sure many of you know, I am a long time fan of the eXile's War Nerd, AKA Gary Brecher. So I was pleasantly surprised to see an interview of him being done over at Blood and Treasure, to help promote his new book. He also answers the long posited conspiracy theory that he is actually John Dolan/Mark Ames/some hideous combination of the two.

Link via Liberal Conspiracy.

Operation: Mindfuck Pack

http://www.megaupload.com/es/?d=27X5LIHF 227 MB download

Download mirror:

http://www.mediafire.com/?mdcyy3zlswz - Part 1
http://www.mediafire.com/?4xyydjxngwn - Part 2
http://www.mediafire.com/?2ugg32x9syb - Part 3

Titles are:


The Structure of the Mind - Ben Goertzel
The MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences (1999) - Robert A Wilson and Frank C Keil
The Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology - Edited by Charles Spielberger
Putting a new spin on groups - The science of of Chaos - Bud A McClure
Billion Dollar Bunko - Simon Lovell
The Changing Images of Man by Stanford Research Institute
Derren Brown - Behind the Screen
Derren Brown - Pure Effect
Get Anyone to do Anything - David J Lieberman
Undoing Yourself - Christopher Hyatt
Theory of Power - Jeff Vail
The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature - Matt Ridley
PsyOps and Ethics - Michael Aquino
Propaganda - Edward Bernays
Prometheus Rising - Robert Anton Wilson
The role of cognitive and socio-cognitive conflict in learning to reason - Katiuscia Sacco and Monica Bucciarelli
Secret Incunabula.org paper - Joesph Matheny (?)
Society of the Spectacle - Guy Debord
Stealth Marketing - Jay Abraham
Strategic Information Warfare (RAND corporation) - Roger C Molander, Andrew S Riddle, Peter A Wilson
The Strategic Game of ? And ? - Unknown
The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold - Robert Levine
The Selfish Meme - Kate Distin
The Advertised Mind - Erik du Plessis
The Art of Memetics - Wes Unruh and Edward Wilson
The Authoritarians - Bob Altemeyer
The Origin and Evolution of Cultures - Robert Boyd and Peter J Richerson
The Psychology of Entertainment Media - Edited by L. J. Shrum
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
Think Two Products Ahead - Ben Mack
This Is Not A Game (extract) - Dave Szulborski


All these books are pretty heavy on psychology, NLP and marketing, and are low on actual pranks and tricks. The idea is more to condition your mind to think about how other people think, then exploit that knowledge.

Schrödinger's Feminist

Apparently, according to the somewhat confused Cath Elliott of the Guardian, men cannot be feminists (depending on who you believe). As she notes in her article:

Can everyone who supports the idea of women's rights call themselves a feminist, or are there other criteria that have to be met before people are allowed to sport the label? Like having a vagina for example, or having experience of life as a female and all the attendant discriminations that that brings?

I have to say, this mostly caught my attention because earlier yesterday, before I read this article, I had been reading another one on Alternet where American feminist and blogger Amanda Marcotte (who had previously worked for John Edwards) was being interviewed about her new book.

When questioned about male feminists, her view was that:

The biggest thing a man can do is be a feminist but quit piddling about it. I was reading your blog [Feministe] the other day and there were all these women who were like, 'My boyfriend is great, he cleans, and he is a feminist, he just doesn't call himself one, he's a humanist, blah blah blah.' It's OK, guys, get your mouth around the word "feminist." Say "patriarchy" out loud. Accept it.

Which I think is a fairly sensible viewpoint. If Feminism is an ideology, as I understand the term from my old Ideologies class (in other words, it has a Descriptive, Prescriptive and Strategic element to it, which is the entire ideology) then it should be open to men. Holding a particular world view is not limited to one's genetalia, and neither is accepting or implementing that solution.

Yet despite Cath Elliott concluding she has no problem with men calling themselves Feminists, she quotes those who do. Some such quotes include these lovely gems:

Some men, they argue, automatically assume a dominant role when they become activists, claiming to be better feminists than feminist women, and failing to recognise and challenge their own sexist behaviour. These so-called fellow travellers merely reinforce the tired gender stereotyping that feminism seeks to subvert, and by their domineering behaviour, they silence women's voices and perpetuate existing male power and oppression. They jockey for control and appoint themselves as spokespeople, in a diverse non-hierarchical movement that neither needs nor seeks figureheads or leaders.

And according to a member of the National Organisation for Men against Sexism:

"Although I believe that men can be pro-feminist and anti-sexist, I do not believe we can be feminists in the strictest sense of the word in today's society. Men, in this patriarchal system, cannot remove themselves from their power and privilege in relation to women. To be a feminist one must be a member of the targeted group (ie a woman) not only as a matter of classification but as having one's directly-lived experience inform one's theory and praxis."

Now, ignoring for the moment the issue of transsexuals (of either birth gender) or those women who have never themselves experienced discrimination, I think these statements are very revealing, if not misleading in their conclusions. According to these people, one can do the exact same things a female Feminist can do, yet at the same time they are disqualified from that descriptive name for reasons beyond their actions.

That I find interested, far more so than another piece of tedious political infighting. Apparently, there are distinctions between actions, factors which do not in any way effect those actions, and identity.

I find such distinctions...uncomfortable. To say the least.

Let us assume an anonymous internet blogger or forum goer. Their name is gender neutral, and they never reveal their identity throughout any public or private exchanges, even by use of pronouns or implications concerning sexuality and relationships. Yet, at the same time, they do refer to themselves as a Feminist and have been very vocal in aiding Feminist concerns and the understanding and spread of the ideology. In short, they support the descriptive, prescriptive and strategic elements that make up Feminism, of one brand or another.

Is this a person Feminist or not?

Apparently, we cannot know until we collapse the field by opening the box - that is to say, until we ascertain their gender identity. They may be a Feminist, and they may not be. All their actions are consistent with Feminist thought, yet they themselves can be considered only one until they reveal they are male, which is of course a real possibility. And what if they lied, and said or implied they were female, and thus were accepted even by the above Feminists who do not believe men can be one? Inconsistencey abounds in this worldview.

I find this amusing, because if one accepts the above argument it totally undermines essentialism in some schools of Feminist thought. Naturally, the Nietzschean in me finds this both amusing and somewhat vexing and sad at the same time.

It also suggests, to me, that the distinction between what one is and what one does is in many ways so pointless, unless what one does is impacted by what one is in the first place, limiting or allowing certain actions. While there is certainly room for debate over what one's actions signify, one cannot declare that if two people do the same thing, they are not, in that sense, sharing the same signifier, based on attributes that have nothing to do with their actions.

You can, of course, but you only invite contradiction and fallacious invention (a la Plato) into your ideas. And while that may be fine for some merehumes, it doesn't really cut it with me. A little Saturday afternoon philosophy for you to ponder.

Oh yes it is!

But Brutus is an honourable man

You know its time to log off the internet.....#2

When you start rewriting Clash songs to make them sound like they are referring to your forum:


Hanging about
Down on Apple street
I spent a lot of time on my feet
When i saw some passing noobs yeah,
We did chance to speak

I knew how to post
Y' know an
They knew how to meme
An' one of them had a Sacred Chao
t-shirt that was not clean

All the young n00bs
Laugh your life
Cos there ain't much to cry for
All the young cunts
Live it now
Cos there ain't much to die for

Everybody wants to bum
A ride on the chaos and discord coaster
And we went out
Got our name and became a new poster
Of course we got some moderators
Though they ain't the mafia
A banhammer is a banhammer
When they get 'em out on yer

You gotta drag yourself to rant
Drug yourself to post
You're dead from the waist down
By the middle of the week

Face front you got the future shining
Like goatse man's wedding ring
But i swear as we get closer
It looks like a shooped pic of Sting
But it's better than some blog
Now that's no place to waste your youth
I posted there for a week once
I luckily got the boot

Mecca time nonsense

HOLD THE PRESSES, BREAKING NEWS! PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE THEY ARE FOLLOWING THE DIVINE LAW OF THE SUPREME BEING AND CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE WANT TO PUT THEMSELVES AT THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD!

I mean, who could have seen it coming? Gosh, people who think that they are the truely devoted followers of a non-existant creator want to make the time based on their most holy city the standard time around the world. Who would have thunk it?

I know I'm only contributing to this non-story by talking about it.....but come on. Seriously? This is what passes for news nowadays? Its apparently fascinating enough to warrant 109 new links on Technorati, putting it into the top 5 news links of the day.

Yet....I'm honestly struggling to see why so many people care. Its not even interesting from an anthropological view, because both the Ancient Greeks and Mayans claimed certain shrines of theirs were at the centre or navel of the world. And that's just off the top of my head.

And its not like they're calling on changing the timezones to some completely made up and impractical unit of time that was mentioned in the Koran or anything, although that would be both amusing and newsworthy.

Its just another example of how people, especially religious ones, see themselves as being at the centre of everything. And examples of that abound every day, for someone with their eyes open enough to see.

Colbert blatantly a closet Discordian

Lets see:

• Golden Apple (well, golden-ish)
• Talk of illumination
• Colbert complains he is not listed as a Saint
• Colbert suggests making everyone else infalliable and the Pope himself falliable

I think it would be hard to get any better evidence than this.

I don't know if I can take the irony much longer

Alan "not the Minister" Johnson noted, in his puff piece on the ridiculous Euston Manifesto in the Guardian today that

Albert Camus warned that a love of freedom and progress can become "weirdly inseparable from a morbid obsession with murder and suicide".

Now, who does that sound like more to you? The Eustonista who trumpeted marching into Baghdad and deposing Saddam Hussein (and since then have also defended extraordinary rendition and torture) or "the foggy zone of the post-left"?

Hmm, I wonder....people who didn't want war, and people who did want war? Who is more at ease with violence in the name of progress, people who didn't want to overthrow a vicious and bloody dictator, and those who had no problem sending an army half way around the world to engage in social engineering on a vast scale in the Middle East? Alan Johnson, I believe the kettle would like to make racial commentary on the pot in this case....

There's just something about women troublemakers...

I know it's barely been a day since I mentioned the lovely Ruth Fowler as my favourite Erisian avatar of the now, but I thought I should mention this as well, since the whole event has been kicking up a storm state-side.

I speak of the Yale University artist Aliza Shvarts, who recently ignited an online flame war of epic proportions when it turned out she had apparently used aborted fetuses in the creation of her art. Naturally, the 'pro-life' brigade went apeshit, in the same way as they did over Stop My Abortion, and it seemed all very commendable, but rather passe, in the way trolling Christians who freak out at practically anything at all is.

And then, Yale University came out and said not to worry, because it was all performance art anyway and clearly fake and so nothing to worry about. So the pro-lifer's continued to give her shit for being sick in the head or something and the pro-choicer's started taking shots too, for trivializing abortion (strange, if had actually been art, would that have still been their position). And of course, by this point, the media is involved as well. So now its the pro-life lot, pro-choice lot and the media in general who have been trolled.

But then....ANOTHER TWIST! It turns out that Aliza did in fact use the technique originally described, or so she claims. It could, of course, just be another way of continuing the drama and media hysteria over the artwork. It could be drawing people further into a different form of creative fiction than the one Yale University had in mind, one in which all the participants are real, and think it is real, but where the content matter is faked, passed on through varying points of view and interpretation, all with Aliza pulling the strings. Or it could actually be that way. Whichever.

Either way, my congratulations and respect go to her, for taking a rather dull way of promoting art (pissing off the Fundies) and applying a good level of creativity to it. Even more, I express admiration at her ability to both annoy the University and the pro-choice group into the deal.

I am certainly impressed enough to send Ms Shvarts an email to thank and congratulate her for her services to making people hysterically overreact. I'm sure she's recieving a lot of mail (probably most of it from mentally deranged individuals and filled with all sorts of unpleasant material) so its very possible she may not respond, but if she does, and I have her permission to reprint, I will let you know.

And finally, I leave you with some of the humourless reactions of the blogosphere (culled from ED), for your enjoyment.


If you want to do a comparative study of abomination, at least the Nazis of the Third Reich had going for them the mitigating factor of having committed unspeakable evil in a quixotic, whack scheme to "better humanity." At least as they understood it.


I have a certificate of mental illness right here waiting for your signatures. First, we arrest her, then find her incompetent to stand trial, she goes to the mental institution. Let her out to attend trail in about two years, after lots of neuroleptic medication, then fond her guilty of public indecency, she goes to the can for a month, but then we invoke Hendrix V> Kansas, and stick her back in the nut house for another five years. When she come out she has tardive diskensia and looks like a old hag making faces. I call that a just punishment.

Hey, it is my art project


Whether you really will be watching Aliza Shvarts kill her unborn children, or you will be watching Aliza Shvarts pretend to kill her unborn children, you will be watching Aliza Shvarts deny her humanity and present herself as a barbarian, to barbarians. Pia Lindman, you too should be ashamed of yourself. The entire university should. Utterly diabolical. Sick, Nazi-style stuff. The idea that this sort of thing is even conceivable, and at one of the nation's elite universities, shows how far the culture of death has come

You know its time to log off the internet when.... #1

Start of a brand new series which will just prove I really should log off more often.

You know its time to log off the internet when....


1) You have a dream in which Rick Astley personally rickrolls you, but then you wake up and feel depressed because nothing that cool will ever really happen.

2) You realize there is a market for War on Terror slashfic

A quick observation

How do the BNP pack so much irony into such short posts?

Its times like this I wish my blog has the lulz emoticon on it...

I think I may be in love...

And that is not something I say lightly. But then again, its not every day I find a cam-whoring, ex-stripper, who trolls for cash...and so, having done so, I find her somewhat fascinating.

For those of you who don't have a finger on the pulse of mainstream/left-wing blogging in the UK, I am talking of the delectable Ruth Fowler. She of Comment is Free infamy. Over the last week or so, she has pretty much managed to wind up much of the UK left wing blogosphere. Well, at least the parts of it I have visited.

And when you look at some of her articles, it is not hard to see why she has caused such a stir. Here are a few selected articles and their subtitles, links provided.


The antichrist for feminists
There I was, thinking I was just making a quick buck, when all the time I was illustrating that feminism is about choice

Club rules
Lefties are supposed to be the nice ones. But increasingly, liberals are just puritanical hypocrites

Flab isn't fab
You don't get fat by accident. Eating so much requires Olympic-class stamina and athleticism

And imagine lobbing these into the sort of people who frequent the Guardian for anything except entertainment. Yeah, precisely, its hilarious and designed to do only 2 things:

wind people up
get her name better known (for her book)

And of course, it does help that Ms Fowler is not only getting paid to troll, which is enough to earn my respect, and is fairly intelligent and well-read, which catches my interest. She is also quite the looker. Here is one of the more...work safe pictures from her site (although most of them are fairly tasteful, so if your employers have a liberal policy, feel free to sneak a look).




Yeah, precisely. I shall have to watch her future articles very closely, I think. I love a trouble-maker, especially of her potential.

Still busy

Just a notice, that my degree work is, predictably, becoming rather large and heavy going as the end of semester arrives. So no updates will be made until the weekend at least, where I will try to do some articles, inbetween recording a podcast.

The best single statement on the Olympics business

And sadly, I am fully aware of the irony of that sign. I can only hope it is satire....

Anton Vowl is a brave man

You need a constitution like a tank to be able to stand looking at UK Tabloid newspapers, let alone critically read and analyze the arguments contained within. That sort of superhuman effort should at the very least merit mention in the Guiness World Records, if not qualify for some sort of public award.

Which is why I am very thankful for the Enemies of Reason blog, because it means I don't have to, while at the same time keeping my finger on the pulse of what is selling and what rubbish is being injected into the public discourse.

Diabetics suck

Srsly.

The most interesting thing...

About the current terrorism trial going on in the UK is the complete lack of concentration on the actual level of threat. Every newscast I have seen has been concentrating on the videos the guys made, presumably for the sake of drama.

What has been overlooked is could the guys have actually said what the government claimed they could do, which is create explosives from liquid to down a plane? I've seen a number of things to cast doubt on this.

Firstly, I had a number of conversations with various terrorism experts up at St Andrews who expressed a level of doubt over what was intended by the operation itself. Some, such as Dr John Horgan, suggested it was perhaps intended to embarass the security services, show the futility of their extra security. Previously, that would have almost certainly involved actually killing people, but in today's hyper-sensitive media climate, even the attempt alone can cause mass hysteria.

Secondly, a former senior British Army Intelligence Officer has also cast doubt on the official narrative of events.

"The idea that these people could sit in the plane toilet and simply mix together these normal household fluids to create a high explosive capable of blowing up the entire aircraft is untenable," said Lt. Col. Wylde, who was trained as an ammunition technical officer responsible for terrorist bomb disposal at the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in Sandhurst.

And finally, there is this discussion on Schneier on Security which seems to be backing up the claim of Lt. Col. Wylde, and treating the official version of events with some skepticism.

It's like trying to blow up a plane with your elementary-school science project volcano.

Of course, the plot did ultimately succeed....it triggered a hilariously out of proportion government response and scared a bunch of sheep....uh, I mean, Daily Mail and Sun readers. That's all you really need to do now.