Sunday, March 24, 2013

Henry Rollins: The One Decision that Changed My Life Forever

The more things change....

 photo technology-advances1_zpsa0591e47.gif

"The wilderness once offered men a plausible way of life...now it functions as a psychiatric refuge. Soon there will be no wilderness....Soon there will be no place to go. Then the madness becomes universal...and the universe goes mad."

Season of the Crotalus......

Spring is one of the most beautiful times of the year in the desert, but it can also be a time for caution. Rattlesnakes lie dormant during the cold fall and winter months and awaken from hibernation in the warm months of March and April.

The venomous bite of a rattlesnake has evolved as a tool for hunting and killing their prey. The venom not only kills their prey but also begins the digestive process by breaking down the tissue with hemotoxic components. The hollow fangs of a rattlesnake unfold from the roof of the snake's mouth when it strikes its victim. The venom is injected through the fangs which puncture the victim's skin.

    Rattlesnake Statistics
  • Approximately 8,000 people a year receive venomous snakebites in the U.S., 9-15 victims die. (FDA)
  • 25% of adult rattlesnake bites are dry, with no venom injected. (Brown, 1997)
  • Rattlesnakes can only strike a distance equal to 1/2 their own length

Saturday, March 23, 2013

The CIA's secret experiments to turn cats into spies....


In the 1960s, the Central Intelligence Agency recruited an unusual field agent: a cat. In an hour-long procedure, a veterinary surgeon transformed the furry feline into an elite spy, implanting a microphone in her ear canal and a small radio transmitter at the base of her skull, and weaving a thin wire antenna into her long gray-and-white fur. This was Operation Acoustic Kitty, a top-secret plan to turn a cat into a living, walking surveillance machine. The leaders of the project hoped that by training the feline to go sit near foreign officials, they could eavesdrop on private conversations.



io9


Friday, March 22, 2013

Something to think about.....


“The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species, bent on ensuring his salvation, security, and sanity. ”



Thomas Stephen Szasz


Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Legend of Trentren Vilu and Caicai Vilu


The Legend of Trentren



Vilu and Caicai Vilu is the “legend of the geography and origin of the Chiloean archipelago, and mountains of southern Chile”, which was caused by a fierce battle between two mythical snakes, Trentren Vilu (trentren=”related with the earth”, vilu=”snake”) and Caicai Vilu (Caicai=”related with the water”, vilu=”snake”).



Legend



The Trentren Vilu is the god of Earth, and is a generous spirit and protecter of all earth’s life. Caicai Vilu is the god of Water and the origin of all that inhabits it, and rules the seas.



According to this myth, thousands of years ago, what is now the Chiloé Province was once one contiguous landmass with continental Chile. One day a monstrous serpent appeared and inundated the lowlands, valleys, and mountains, submerging all the flora and fauna. Without delay, Trentren Vilu appeared to start a confrontation with his enemy, elevating the land and protecting it from disaster. The battle persisted a long time. Trentren Vilu reached a costly victory, he won the battle, but was unable to restore the land to its primeval state leaving it in the dismembered form it still has today.



At the end of the hostilities, Caicai Vilu left as representative and owner of all the seas, the king Millalobo (Millalonco), who was conceived during the invasion when a beautiful woman fell in love with a sea lion.



This legend describes the new region formed of water and earth and delineates the marine life style of Chiloé.


Have you ever watched the Moon rise?


Video Credit & Copyright: Mark Gee


Scratch ‘n’ Sniff Cannabis Cards


Crimestoppers, an organization that encourages busy-bodies [surely ‘do-gooders’? - ed.] to anonymously grass-up suspected crimes (or possibly neighbors they don’t like?), has launched a Scratch ‘n’ Sniff card to help would-be drug enforcers recognize the tell-tale smell of a cannabis farm.



Dangerous Minds


Monday, March 18, 2013

Aztec conquest altered genetics among early Mexico inhabitants, new DNA study shows


For centuries, the fate of the original Otomí inhabitants of Xaltocan, the capital of a pre-Aztec Mexican city-state, has remained unknown. Researchers have long wondered whether they assimilated with the Aztecs or abandoned the town altogether.



According to new anthropological research from The University of Texas at Austin, Wichita State University and Washington State University, the answers may lie in DNA. Following this line of evidence, the researchers theorize that some original Otomies, possibly elite rulers, may have fled the town. Their exodus may have led to the reorganization of the original residents within Xaltocan, or to the influx of new residents, who may have intermarried with the Otomí population.



Phys.Org


Sunday, March 17, 2013

Spring ?


Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love.



Sitting Bull


Friday, March 15, 2013

Something to think about.....

We need wilderness because we are wild animals. Every man needs a place where he can go to go crazy in peace. Every Boy Scout troop deserves a forest to get lost, miserable, and starving in. Even the maddest murderer of the sweetest wife should get a chance for a run to the sanctuary of the hills. If only for the sport of it. For the terror, freedom, and delirium. Because we need brutality and raw adventure, because men and women first learned to love in, under, and all around trees, because we need for every pair of feet and legs about ten leagues of naked nature, crags to leap from, mountains to measure by, deserts to finally die in when the heart fails.


Thursday, March 14, 2013

Two Fairy Tales....

Pope Joan, 853 AD


According to legend, Pope Joan was a woman who concealed her gender and ruled as pope for two years, from 853-855 ad. Her identity was exposed when, riding one day from St. Peter's to the Lateran, she stopped by the side of the road and, to the astonishment of everyone, gave birth to a child.



The legend is unconfirmed. Skeptics note that the first references to Pope Joan only appear hundreds of years after her supposed reign. However, supporters argue that the Church may have attempted to erase all evidence of her existence from the historical record.



Who Was Pope Joan?



Pope Joan was said to have been born an Englishwoman. She concealed her gender to pursue her scholarly ambitions -- the life of a scholar not being allowed to a woman at that time. Calling herself John Anglicus, she travelled to Athens where she gained a reputation for her knowledge of the sciences. Eventually she came to lecture at the Trivium in Rome where her fame grew even larger. Still disguised as a man, she became a Cardinal, and when Pope Leo IV died in 853 ad was unanimously elected pope.



As Pope John VIII she ruled for two years. However, while riding one day from St. Peter's to the Lateran, she had to stop by the side of the road and supposedly gave birth to a child. According to one legend, upon discovering the Pope's true gender, the people of Rome tied her feet together and dragged her behind a horse while stoning her, until she died. Another legend has it that she was sent to a faraway convent to repent her sins and that the child she bore grew up to become the Bishop of Ostia.



True or False?



It is not known whether the story of Pope Joan is true. The first known reference to her occurs in the thirteenth century, 350 years after her supposed reign. Around this time her image also began to appear as the High Priestess card in the Tarot deck.



The Catholic Church at first seemed to accept the reality of Pope Joan. Marginal notes in a fifteenth century document refer to a statue called "The Woman Pope with Her Child" that was supposedly erected near the Lateran. There was also a rumor that, as a result of Pope Joan, for many years the chairs used during papal consecrations had holes in their seats, so that an official check of the pope's gender could be performed.



During the Reformation in the sixteenth century, the Catholic Church began to deny the existence of Pope Joan. However, at the same time, Protestant writers insisted on her reality, primarily because the existence of a female pope was a convenient piece of anti-Catholic propaganda.



Modern scholars disagree about the historicity of Pope Joan.


Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Fossilized Lightning Tells an Ancient Story


“Fulgurites” are geological formations created when lightning pierces the earth, melting the sand to form a glassy, hollow, tubular cast of the bolt. Scientists can date these petrified electrical discharges and gather data from them on ancient climates and ecologies.



A fulgurite specimen discovered in the Sahara desert in 2007, for instance, also held bubbles of trapped carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitric oxide, created when the lightning oxidized organic material in the soil some 15,000 years ago. Researchers were able to conclude from the gases that the ecology of the Sahara back then, unlike the dry desert of today, consisted of hearty grasses and shrubs typical of semi-arid environments. Fresh evidence that the Sahara was once a more hospitable place — and that lightning really is illuminating.



A Spark in the Sand


Monday, March 11, 2013

Would you risk everything to obtain a treasure worth millions?


As I have gone alone in there And with my treasures bold, I can keep my secret where, And hint of riches new and old.........



Article


Sunday, March 10, 2013

Daylight savings time.....

Saturday, March 9, 2013

bacteria .....


[pl. of bacterium], microscopic unicellular prokaryotic organisms characterized by the lack of a membrane-bound nucleus and membrane-bound organelles. Once considered a part of the plant kingdom, bacteria were eventually placed in a separate kingdom, Monera. Bacteria fall into one of two groups, Archaebacteria (ancient forms thought to have evolved separately from other bacteria) and Eubacteria. A recently proposed system classifies the Archaebacteria, or archaea, and the Eubacteria as major groupings (sometimes called domains) above the kingdom level.



Bacteria were the only form of life on earth for 2 billion years. They were first observed by Antony van Leeuwenhoek in the 17th cent.; bacteriology as an applied science began to develop in the late 19th cent. as a result of research in medicine and in fermentation processes, especially by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch.



Bacteria are remarkably adaptable to diverse environmental conditions: they are found in the bodies of all living organisms and on all parts of the earth–in land terrains and ocean depths, in arctic ice and glaciers, in hot springs, and even in the stratosphere. Our understanding of bacteria and their metabolic processes has been expanded by the discovery of species that can live only deep below the earth's surface and by species that thrive without sunlight in the high temperature and pressure near hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor. There are more bacteria, as separate individuals, than any other type of organism; there can be as many as 2.5 billion bacteria in one gram of fertile soil.


Something to think about.....


“We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. We are monkeys with money and guns.”



― Tom Waits


7,000BC: The dawn of cinema brought to life at Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology


Some of the world’s oldest engravings of the human form – prehistoric rock art from the Italian Alps – have been brought to life by the latest digital technology at Cambridge Unviersity’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.



archaeologynewsnetwork


Friday, March 8, 2013

RIP Alvin Lee


I’d Love To Change The World...but I don't know what to do...


Well, it's not The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, it's.....


The Holy Foreskin.......



Of all the holy relics that circulated throughout medieval Europe, relics associated with Jesus Christ, anything he supposedly touched or used during his life were the most prized. By this measure, no relic was more valuable than the Holy Foreskin since it was an actual body part of Christ. In fact, the foreskin is the only body part the Bible specifically mentions being removed from Christ during his life (eight days after his birth) and which presumably stayed behind on Earth after he ascended into Heaven.



The Holy Foreskin first made an appearance in medieval Europe around 800 ad, when King Charlemagne presented it as a gift to Pope Leo III. Charlemagne said it had been given to him by an angel. However, rival foreskins soon began to pop up all over Europe. All told, twenty-one different churches claimed to have the Holy Foreskin, often at the same time. Various miraculous powers were attributed to these foreskins. In particular, they were supposed to be able to protect women during childbirth.



Given the glut of Holy Foreskins, churches made efforts to have their foreskin authenticated by Church leaders as the sole genuine article. In the early 12th century, the monks of San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome asked Pope Innocent III to rule on the authenticity of their foreskin, but he declined to do so. Later, the monks of Charroux claimed their foreskin to be the only real one, pointing out that it apparently yielded drops of blood. This convinced Pope Clement VII (1523-1534) who declared theirs to be the authentic thing.



Some medieval theologians argued that all the Holy Foreskins necessarily had to be frauds since the actual Holy Foreskin had, they asserted, ascended into Heaven with Christ. The 17th century theologian Leo Allatius speculated in his essay De Praeputio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Diatriba that the holy foreskin had ascended into heaven at the same time as Jesus, and had become the rings of Saturn.



The Catholic Church eventually sought to extract itself from the Holy Foreskin controversy, deciding that it was rather unseemly for so much attention to be paid to Christ's private parts. It adopted the view that all the rival foreskins were frauds, and in 1900 made it a crime punishable by excommunication to write or speak about the Holy Foreskin.




Red Lake Nations Blockades Enbridge Pipelines

“But when I make a good [taxidermy] mount I feel like I beat God in a small way. As though the Almighty said, Let such critter be dead, and I said, 'Fuck You, he can still play the banjo.”

Is Your Red The Same as My Red?

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

The Society for Indecency to Naked Animals


G. Clifford Prout was a man with a mission, and that mission was to put clothes on all the millions of naked animals throughout the world. To realize his dream, Prout founded an organization, the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (abbreviated as SINA). It was left unexplained why the society was 'for indecency' not 'against indecency'.



Prout first appeared before the American public to promote his organization on May 27, 1959 when he appeared on NBC's Today Show. His appearance generated a huge viewer response and soon thousands of letters were pouring in to SINA's headquarters. (Prout had provided a New York mailing address while on the air.)



More interviews followed after the success of this first appearance. Wherever he went Prout promoted his anti-animal-nudity philosophy and repeated his society's catchy slogans: "Decency today means morality tomorrow" and "A nude horse is a rude horse." Prout also urged SINA members (he claimed there were over 50,000 of them) to take an active role in their communities by handing 'SINA Summonses' to people who shamelessly walked their naked pets down the street.



Prout's campaign continued for a number of years until it reached a high point on August 21, 1962, when SINA was featured on the CBS News with Walter Cronkite. As the segment was airing, a few CBS employees recognized that Prout was actually Buck Henry, a comedian and CBS employee. SINA was subsequently revealed to be an elaborate hoax. Although Henry played the role of SINA's president, the hoax had been dreamed up and orchestrated by Alan Abel, who played the part of SINA's vice president.



Abel noted that people had been either outraged by the idea of SINA, or quite supportive of it. One woman in Santa Barbara reportedly tried to donate $40,000 to the cause. Abel politely turned down the money, insisting that the bylaws of SINA forbade him from taking any money from strangers. But surprisingly few called the bluff of Abel and Henry. Apparently almost everyone was willing to accept that such a society could be real.



Although the SINA hoax was officially exposed following the Walter Cronkite interview, Abel managed to keep the joke going for a few more years by means of a SINA newsletter mailed to the faithful. The newsletter included features such as press releases and sewing patterns for pet clothes.


Comet did not wipe out Clovis people


A team of researchers has concluded that a comet did not wipe out the Clovis culture 13,000 years ago. A comet crashing into the Earth some 13,000 years ago was thought to have spelled doom to a group of early North American people, and possibly the extinction of ice age beasts in the region. But the space rock was wrongly accused, according to a group of 16 scientists in fields ranging from archaeology to crystallography to physics, who have offered counterevidence to the existence of such a collision. “Despite more than four years of trying by many qualified researchers, no unambiguous evidence has been found [of such an event],” Mark Boslough, a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, told LiveScience.



Did a Comet Really Chill and Kill Clovis Culture?



A Blog About History


Sunday, March 3, 2013

The Backwater Gospel


As long as anyone can remember, the coming of The Undertaker has meant the coming of death. Until one day the grim promise fails and tension builds as the God fearing townsfolk of Backwater wait for someone to die.


No intelligent life here.....

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Think I'll take a walk ......


“There are some good things to be said about walking. Not many, but some. Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed. I have a friend who's always in a hurry; he never gets anywhere. Walking makes the world much bigger and thus more interesting. You have time to observe the details. The utopian technologists foresee a future for us in which distance is annihilated. … To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me.”



― Edward Abbey


Angora Napkin


Three young women meet the world head-on in a bubblegum pop explosion of harsh reality.


Friday, March 1, 2013