Author: Psybertron

Well I liked this anyway. Can’t recall which blog trail I followed to get to them – sorry, but – somewhere along the same trail I came upon “The Complete Beatles” via Learning to Share.

Just an excuse to post this economics news story link.

Here in Huntsville, Alabam, the cultivated area outside the ‘burbs is nearly all cotton fields, and even in the year or two we’ve been here, we’ve seen them gradually being ploughed over for housing development. Those who’ve been here ten years or more tell us most of the business areas and  malls around us are built on old cotton fields.

Just this last week the cotton pickin’ machines have been at work in the nearby fields. I meant to take some before-and-after pic’s but it looks like I’ve missed the chance for this year.

With all the national housing gloom and doom, the local area is an anomaly, with, military (Redstone Arsenal), space (Marshall Space Flight Centre) and associated high-tech industrial expansion going on.

This film came out in June this year, and Alice sent me a link recently.

I normally run a mile at conspiracy theories, preferring coincidence, cock-up and “passive self -interest”, but I have to say this three-part story is very interesting, going through several cycles of contradiction and paradox – which is no bad thing.

The overarching theme of world-government domination by a handful of power-mad bankers for whom fear and war is big business contrasts with the more benign, organic one-world gaia. ie the problem is not the idea of one-world and borderless government, but how it is achieved and who holds the power.

There is a large middle section on the 9/11 conspiracy theories, much detail of which I still don’t buy, even though the “false flag” terror incident was clearly a convenient trigger for those seeking a pretext for war. Again passive self-interest can engineer plenty of useful coincidences – for my own agenda, this is the hypocrisy of accepted decision-making norms.

The first section is about the ubiqity of mythology behind Christianity – quite straight-forward and entirely credible. The final section is about central banking and taxation. The common theme is the one big conspiracy. Some real issues even if it is too glib to point a finger at “them”.

The real message of the film is to promote critical thinking. No bad thing.

(Joe Campbell and Bill Hicks both figure; unfortunately so does the nutcase known as David Icke. Prejudice should not put you off watching the film right through.)

Greg Proops presents a BBC review of Kerouac’s influential 1957 book, with interviews with the survivors. (The 127 foot continuous roll manuscript was real, auctioned recently, but being the product of the single benzedrine trip is apocryphal, apparently – several edits too before publication, already ten years old when first pubished. Interesting that Jack was a misunderstood US patriot despite close association with Ginsberg and Burroughs before the book, and King of the Beats afterwards during the peace, love and revolution of the 60’s. Drove him to drink and death. What’s so funny ’bout …)

Plenty more TEDTalks here.

Including the delicious Erin McKean. Next time someone quotes a dictionary definition at me as part of an argument, I will be pointing them at this one.

And given that I’ve recently reported on reading “Breaking The Spell”, here is a link to Dan Dennett speaking on dangerous memes – ideas to die for. Just a fluke 😉  and on religions as natural phenomena.

And lots more; E.O.Wilson, Steven Pinker – and Eddi Reader sings too.

This is from 2005 but a good excuse to update the link to TED.

RTFM

Think I’ve seen this before, but picked-up this link from Anecdote.

…. well,  to fill the turbine hall anyway ?

A minor variation on the previous Zen-Minimalist known as Moonlight, with upper-case capitalisation restored, and with the header, footer and extensive side-bar links restored.

Phew !

Ooops sorry folks, I seem to have an error with my template – lost most of my header and side-bar information. Unfortunately I’m on my travels, so it will be next weekend before I can fix.