Further proof

Colorado to use inmates to fill migrant shortage
Tough laws passed last year against illegal immigration have created a need for farmworkers.
By Nicholas Riccardi, Times Staff Writer
March 1, 2007

..."Prisoners who are a low security risk may choose to work in the fields, earning 60 cents a day. They also are eligible for small bonuses." (More...)

We just gotta think up some more laws for folks to break, then we'll be able to compete with China's growing economy.

Break

I'm still working on that wall. My hands have gone from mincemeat to ground beef as I have a habit of not wearing gloves, I'm working with 100 year old lumber, and I just don't pay close enough attention.

I'll be back to posting soon.

Having a Wonderful Time

Some of Blank Maxine's photography from our most recent week in FLA. The whole landscape down there is a bit unreal and has always reminded me of several different J.G. Ballard works.

In this case it's Having a Wonderful Time...

• Link to the CBC's radio drama Having a Wonderful Time

M.D.C. comes to life

Many years ago, from reading Toffler, Gibson, Dick, Ballard, et al I had a sense that in the future we would no longer ask "Where are you from?" but "Who do you work for?". And who enforces the policies and protects the interests of the MDC's?...

From the website...

Blackwater USA is the most comprehensive professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping, and stability operations company in the world.

Blackwater USA comprises nine separate business units to offer the most comprehensive professional security, peacekeeping, and stability operations company in the world.

VISION
To support security, peace, freedom, and democracy everywhere.

MISSION
To support national and international security policies that protect those who are defenseless and provide a free voice for all with a dedication to providing ethical, efficient, and effective turnkey solutions that positively impact the lives of those still caught in desperate times.

Blackwater is committed to the foot soldiers -- the men and women who stand on the frontlines of the global war on terror and who believe in a peaceful future for their communities and nations. Whether serving in or out of uniform, Blackwater is committed to providing these men and women with the very best in training and tactical support to ensure they are fully prepared to meet current and future global security challenges. (Website...)

I don't have to say how evident that Blackwater, by their very existence, represents the U.S.'s slow demise at the hands of corporate power. THEY have been trying to figure out a way to undermine that pesky Constitution without overtly overthrowing the government.
Just keep repeating the mantra "Money good! Government by the people, for the people bad!"
Outsourcing war to those that fight for money is ++ ungood.
Blackwater at WikipediaAnd soldiers' hostility towards merc's are just jealousy.

M.D.C.
"Selfish Shit"

One of the neighborhood guys

The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control - "indoctrination," we might say - exercised through the mass media.

I can't say I've seen him wandering the streets of Cambridge yet, but here's a selection of quotes from neighbor Noam Chomsky.

• Personally, I'm in favor of democracy, which means that the central institutions of society have to be under popular control. Now, under capitalism, we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level--there's little bargaining, a little give and take,but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward. Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until the major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy.


• All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.


• If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.


• If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.


• Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.


• Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony.


• The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

Further evidence...

From Sex Workers to Restaurant Workers, the Global Slave Trade Is Growing
By David Batsone, Sojourners. Posted March 15, 2007

Twenty-seven million slaves exist in our world today. Girls and boys, women and men of all ages are forced to toil in the rug loom sheds of Nepal, sell their bodies in the brothels of Rome, break rocks in the quarries of Pakistan, and fight wars in the jungles of Africa. (More at Alternet: Rights and Liberties...)

If anyone has any leads for a Private Investigator/Research/Intel Analyst position to help stem human rights violations, particularly the slave trade, let me know.

Lorentz Gun

I'm still working on that wall.

Here' something that I find amusing. Not practical, but it looks like a lot of fun.
The Lorentz Gun (formerly the Taser Cannon until Taser forced them to change the name) from a member of Survival Research Laboratories (SRL).

Further evidence...

...of the epic culture shift.

How corporations are like cold war superpowers.
Spy v. Spy
by Ilana Ozernoy
In an effort to ferret out the source of a leak of embarrassing company memos, a Wal-Mart employee apparently intercepted text messages and telephone calls of other employees. (More at The New Republic)

Interesting group...

I haven't read in great detail about these folks, but well before Dan Brown I've always had a curiosity about the Masons, Templars, and the like.

• The Rosicrucian Order AMORC
  
• Wikipedia entry

I'm taking it easy today. Tore down and re-framed two walls in my house. My hands are mincemeat.

Figures...

As busker noted in The Death Of America, Captain America's been assassinated.

Captain America shot dead at 66
NEW YORK: He fought the Nazis. He is revered by other crime-fighters worldwide. But the beloved, shield-carrying superhero, Captain America, has finally met his end...(More)

What happened?

...the government ordered them to reveal their true identities and register with authorities.

This caused a major rift and resulted in two super-powered factions, one led by Captain America, who went underground and formed a resistance movement, the other by Iron Man.

And from CNN

NEW YORK (CNN) -- He fought and triumphed over Hitler, Tojo, international Communism and a host of supervillains, but he could not dodge a sniper's bullet.

Comic book hero Captain America is dead. (Full story)

I spent the day working with some of my newer, younger colleagues. They are completely bereft of anything resembling honor, community, sacrifice, idealism. They just don't get it, the little narcissistic, self-absorbed little shits.

I swear I'm gonna get "REALITY" tattooed on my fist.

Free Speech Zone

I thought it was here, however with increasing ownership of everything into one big private sector world, now it seems there are only tiny pockets of areas duly designated by the proper authorities.

On a side note, it's interesting to think the mountain range on the right is the oldest in the world while on the left, that one is relatively new.

Erosion on an epic scale.

Real world

Blank Maxine and I are tearing down, rebuilding, and remodeling a wall in the house I live. It's quite fortunate that we own the house in which we're doing all this work, because a landlord would probably take notice and we'd lose our security deposit.
Because of this, the may be a few less dispatches over the next week or so.
I have added some reading material on the left in the form of RSS feeds that I check everyday. They are several "social barometer" sites for me.

Repent!
The major social - political - economic - environmental transition is nigh!

Talkin' to your shoes

As usual, Boing Boing's tipped me off to something exceedingly important.

Navy Researching Vomit Beam

You never know what's going to land in your mailbox. Last night, I found a weapon that shoots an invisible wall-penetrating beam that makes people so dizzy they fall over. (It can make them puke, too, but I'll get to that in a moment.)

Now we're talking.

Invocon, Inc., one of dozens of companies expected to showcase their wares at the forum, says it'll be there to display its "non-lethal, stand-off weapon for military and law enforcement personnel that could ultimately work through walls and other non-metallic structures."

More at Wired's Danger Room
And you know Those schematics are going to eventually have an open source equivalent.

BTW...here's a list of many of our favorite names for driving the porcelain bus.

Links - Under The Hood

One quick one, but I think it might be informative/useful.
TechOnline's Under The Hood which features teardowns of various pieces of everyday tech. I think it's an absolute must for everyone if not to know how to bend the technology, at least gaze at its guts and see that inside all that THEY had made sleek, beautiful, and inaccessible externally, often has very mortal and primitive internals that any of us can master.

• TechOnline - Under The Hood

“Just as psychoanalysis reconstructs...

...the original traumatic situation in order to release the repressed material, so we are now being plunged back into the archaeopsychic past, uncovering the ancient taboos and drives that have been dormant for epochs… Each one of us is as old as the entire biological kingdom, and our bloodstreams are tributaries of the great sea of its total memory.”
— The Drowned World, J.G Ballard, Millennium 1999, p 41.

I had read that we can expect a three to nine meter rise in sea level due to global warming.
Here's a nifty link to flood your neighborhood - Flood Maps
Flood Maps takes Googles maps and floods them to your chosen rise in sea level...from a subtle one meter to "hells-a-popping so grow gills granny!" fourteen meters.
As I said before, I'm getting boat to tie up to my new beach front property.

Before















After 9m - /It looks like MIT's gonna do ok.

Revisiting Dr. Steel

Imagine the sort of influence a celebrity could have if they weren’t simply overcompensating and looking for the world’s attention as a result of some deeply rooted feeling of insecurity. - Dr. Steel

Interview with Doctor Steel

The Four Guys interview Dr. Steel
The Four Guys set off a few days ago on a dangerous mission to find the hidden fortress of Dr. Steel, a self made master of music mystical mastery. We searched the heights of the Himalayas and the dirty streets of South Boston in search of the ultimate truth that Dr. Steel held hidden away in his dark dungeon. (More...)

Dr. Steel's website and world domination toys
Dr. Steel at Myspace

I signed up and got my card and some stickers free! Balls! A person could spend a lot of time at the website. Lots of tunes, animations, etc.

If you're curious what this guys sounds like, here's a couple of pretty neat clips.
Fibonacci Sequence

Back and Forth

Skills

I'm not a survivalist per se. I don't think there is an army of blue helmeted U.N. troops under the Rockies waiting to spring and take over the country. What I do believe is that there are skills that everyone should know to keep in touch with the earth, and therefore, reality. One thing that I truly appreciate from my time in service were the various Rangers and Special Forces that I had the privilege to work with. I learned a lot. After a several years in, I had considered going into Special Forces myself an Ops/Intel Sergeant, but I just couldn't commit to the amount of time it takes to train.

With that, here's a nifty link:

Rick F. Tscherne's Ranger Digest
From the website:
A Site Dedicated To Teaching Soldiers, Campers, Hikers, & Other Outdoor Enthusiasts "How to Survive & Thrive in the Outdoors."

As a former US Army Ranger, Drill Instructor, and an advisor/trainer to the Bosnia & Herzegovina Army (1996-97) under the US State Department approved "Train & Equip Program." I have always enjoyed sharing with soldiers my personal experiences and tips on how to survive in a military outdoor environment through field expedient know-how.

Articles, survival manuals written by Tscherne (complete with a pre-order warning about course language), and gear.

To the Tardis!

Ronald L. Mallett, Ph.D

For the strong gravitational field of a circulating cylinder of light, I have found new exact solutions of the Einstein field equations for the exterior and interior gravitational fields of the light cylinder. The exterior gravitational field is shown to contain closed timelike lines.

The presence of closed timelike lines indicates the possibility of time travel into the past. This creates the foundation for a time machine based on a circulating cylinder of light. (Ronald Mallett, "The gravitational field of a circulating light beam", Foundations of Physics 33, 1307 (2003))

For those that are a little more mathematically inclined
The Gravitational Field of a Circulating Light Beam
Ronald L. Mallett (PDF link)

And now there's apparently a search for funding by the University of Connecticut Foundation. Check out the Space-Time Twisting by Light (STL) page.

But before anyone starts packing their bags, there are questions and debates about parts of the work. What I find interesting though, is that it's about parts of the work and not the work as a whole. This makes me think that Dr. Mallett may be on to something and it might only be a matter of time (no pun intended).

Links

I'd like to be more paranoid. But alas, the sad reality is that conspiracies are usually not that well organized, agendized, or competent. The flip side to that is that while no group of people are necessarily out to get you, the systems they create might.

27B Stroke 6
The title is taken from one of my favorite movies, Brazil. This Wired Magazine blog deals with tech security and civil liberty issues.


Intelligence Meditation
Intel people I think are creative people at their core. I am. I'm also a big picture, concept kinda guy. I like finding the truth. I like the little surprises that can come along with the truth. I don't like policy people. They tend to be bureaucrats and have no sense of personal power, so they tend to bully. Most intel folks I think would recognize that most shit doesn't need to be secret, and a highly paranoid and power hungry admin/ops tends to slow the intel cycle by making information way too compartmentalized. By the time it gets disseminated, the product's gone cold or at least luke warm.

• Intel-Dump
• Counterterrorism Blog
  
• Ranger Against War

Prank the Monkey

Never trust a man in a suit
by Justin Becker
Issue 9.9
Wed, February 28, 2007

If you’ve ever wanted to punk Ashton Kutcher, receive handcrafted gift boxes from Charles Manson, or pay for highway tolls with oranges, there’s a way to do it, and it’s easier than you think: Just wear a suit.
When you wear a suit, everybody trusts you right away. ‘Why would some freeloader be wearing a suit? He must be trustworthy,’ ” says Sir John Hargrave. “That’s how these corporate criminals get away with it. They’re wearing suits.”
(more at Boston's Weekly Dig)

• A link to Hargrave's site ZUG - The World's Only Comedy Site

And I own a pretty damn good suit.
(Blank Snag @ work)

Build your own universe!

Michael Frayn speaks with Tom Ashbrook about his book "The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of the Universe" which discusses how our individual interpretations of what we perceive creates a universe that we understand.

• NPR's On Point

Tip from Blank Maxine