Saturday, September 20. 2008
'Everything the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury Department are trying to do to stem the tide of the self-destructing U.S. financial system is a stopgap. They are locking the barn door after the horse - many horses - have already escaped, and they know it.' (Deprogram article). media-underground.net
Friday, August 8. 2008
'The idea that music can transform reality predates by many millennia the category "music" as we know it. Before art was understood as a phenomenon in itself apart from its ritual application (a relatively recent and culturally specific development), what we now call music was indistinguishable from magic.' (Reality Sandwich article). media-underground.net
Tuesday, July 1. 2008
'Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.' (New Yorker article). media-underground.net
Thursday, June 12. 2008
'We recognize the debasement of standards, we see the signs of intellectual decay. Yet we do nothing. A look at what happens when we refuse to pay attention to what’s important.' (Adbusters article). media-underground.net
Monday, June 9. 2008
'We know that the universe contains many stars. There are some 100 billion of them in our galaxy alone, and the observable universe contains billions of galaxies. Thanks to recent astronomical discoveries, we now know that it's common for these stars to have planets. Many of these solar systems are much older than our own. You start with billions and billions of potential germination points for life, and you end up with a sum total of zero alien civilizations that developed technologically to the point where we earthly observers can detect them.
'So what's stopping them? Perhaps the most compelling theory is that there is some kind of barrier - what the economist and polymath Robin Hanson called a "Great Filter".' (Boston Globe article). media-underground.net
Monday, June 2. 2008
'Just by walking down the street you could be subject to a personal biometric system, you could be scanned by the gateway of the transit system, there could be something embedded in the street or in the flooring beneath you... you could be touching other tangible interfaces in the environment around you... the lamp posts and the other features of the streetscape could have informational services... and last but not least there's the surveillance element, there's a UAV, a robotic helicopter which is also surveying the cityscape and communicating with all of these devices... This is really what I mean by a transformation of the relationship between user and device. This person is not a user anymore in any real sense of the English world, they are a subject.' (Red Ice Creations article). media-underground.net
Wednesday, May 28. 2008
'You probably didn't hear about the House voting to ban Pentagon propaganda last Thursday - since the television networks have once again conveniently failed to cover the story.
'But in a surprise move, a 2009 defense policy bill passed with an amendment, sponsored by Rep. Paul Hodes (D-N.H.), that outlaws the Defense Department from engaging in "a concerted effort to propagandize" the American people. The measure would also force an investigation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) into efforts to plant positive news stories about the war in U.S. media.' (Alternet article). media-underground.net
Sunday, May 25. 2008
'An analysis of century-old bottles of absinthe - the kind once quaffed by the likes of van Gogh and Picasso to enhance their creativity - may end the controversy over what ingredient caused the green liqueur's supposed mind-altering effects .
'The culprit seems plain and simple: The century-old absinthe contained about 70 percent alcohol, giving it a 140 proof kick. In comparison, most gins, vodkas and whiskeys are just 80 to 100 proof.' (Live Science article). media-underground.net
Saturday, May 24. 2008
'Scientists hate God. Or find God very disturbing. In fact, modern science has found no evidence of God and so it's stupid anymore to think God exists.
'The above statements are often presented as conventional wisdom, but are they true?' (MSNBC article). media-underground.net
Friday, May 23. 2008
'Sexual desire and orgasm are subject to various influences on the brain and nervous system, which controls the sex glands and genitals.
'The ingredients of desire may differ for men and women, but researchers have revealed some surprising similarities. For example, visual stimuli spur sexual stirrings in women, as they do in men.
'Achieving orgasm, brain imaging studies show, involves more than heightened arousal. It requires a release of inhibitions engineered by shutdown of the brain’s center of vigilance in both sexes and a widespread neural power failure in females.' (Scientific American article). media-underground.net
Wednesday, May 14. 2008
'The glass armonica’s ghostly notes will cause insanity in its musicians and listeners! At least this is what was thought to be true in the 18th century. People were frightened by the armonica’s sound due to it’s strange interactions with the human brain and ears (more on this later). Benjamin Franklin invented the glass armonica in 1761 after being profoundly moved by the sounds of the glass harp.' (Oddstrument article). media-underground.net
Tuesday, April 29. 2008
'At the age of 102 years, Albert Hofmann died peacefully last Tuesday morning, 29th April, in his home near Basel, Switzerland. Still last weekend we talked to him, and he expressed his great joy about the blooming plants and the fresh green of the meadows and trees around his house. His vitality and his open mind conducted him until his last breath.
'He is reputed to be one of the most important chemists of our times. He is the discoverer of LSD, which he considers, up to date, as both a "wonder drug" and a "problem child". In addition he did pioneering work as a researcher of other psychoactive substances as well as active agents of important medicinal plants and mushrooms. Under the spell of the consciousness-expanding potential of LSD the scientist turned increasingly into a philosopher of nature and a visionary critical of contemporary culture.' (Gaia Media article). media-underground.net
Thursday, April 17. 2008
'An Orphaned Work is any creative work of art where the artist or copyright owner has released their copyright, whether on purpose, by passage of time, or by lack of proper registration. In the same way that an orphaned child loses the protection of his or her parents, your creative work can become an orphan for others to use without your permission.
'Currently, you don't have to register your artwork to own the copyright. You own a copyright as soon as you create something. International law also supports this. Right now, registration allows you to sue for damages, in addition to fair value.
'If the Orphan Works legislation passes, you and I and all creatives will lose virtually all the rights to not only our future work but to everything we've created over the past 34 years, unless we register it with the new, untested and privately run (by the friends and cronies of the U.S. government) registries.' (Animation World Magazine article). media-underground.net
Tuesday, April 1. 2008
'An upcoming article in April’s Journal of Consumer Research will present recent research from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the University of Waterloo, Canada that claims that exposure to images of corporate brands can effect how people think and work.' (Grinding article). media-underground.net
Monday, March 24. 2008
'Magical thinking springs up everywhere. Some irrational beliefs are passed on to us. But others we find on our own. Survival requires recognizing patterns - night follows day, berries that color will make you ill. And because missing the obvious often hurts more than seeing the imaginary, our skills at inferring connections are overtuned. No one told Wade Boggs that eating chicken before every single game would help his batting average; he decided that on his own, and no one can argue with his success. We look for patterns because we hate surprises and because we love being in control.' (Psychology Today article). media-underground.net
Sunday, March 23. 2008
'Pundits of all political stripes have pondered the effect that religion is currently having in the world, and what that means for the future of the planet. The rise of radical Islam has right-wing commentators up in arms, while the popularity of evangelical mega-churches in the United States has caused plenty of hand wringing on the left.
'The fears of both sides are unfounded, according to Alan Wolfe, writing for the Atlantic. “Most of the religious revivals we are seeing throughout the world today complement, and ultimately reinforce, secular developments,” Wolfe writes. “They are more likely to encourage moderation than fanaticism.”' (UTNE article). media-underground.net
Saturday, March 22. 2008
'U.S. scientists inspired by the legendary improvisation of Miles Davis and John Coltrane are peering inside the brains of today's jazz musicians to learn where creativity comes from. Think dreaming.
'This is not just a curiosity for jazz fans but a bold experiment in the neuroscience of music, a field that is booming as researchers realize that music illuminates how the brain works. How we play and hear music provides a window into most everyday cognitive functions - from attention to emotion to memory - that in turn may help find treatments for brain disorders.' (China Post article). media-underground.net
Wednesday, March 19. 2008
'What if time disappeared? Yes, it sounds like a silly question - and if the cosmos sticks to the current laws of physics - it's a question we need never ask beyond this article. Writing this article would in itself be a waste of my time if the cosmos was that simple. But I'm hedging my bets and continuing to type, as I believe we have only just scratched the surface of the universal laws of physics; the universe is anything but simple. There may in fact be something to this crazy notion that the nature of the universe could be turned on its head should the fundamental quantity of time be transformed into another dimension of space.' (Universe Today article). media-underground.net
Tuesday, March 18. 2008
'Is there any question that the United States is a profoundly religious country? A 2002 survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that this was the only developed country in which a majority of residents said that religion played "a very important" role in their lives. People running for offices ranging from dogcatcher to president not only routinely give speeches in churches; they court religious leaders of various faiths and pepper their rhetoric with specific Christian invocations (Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama has even channeled the King James Bible and declared, "I am confident that we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth").
'Yet as Steven Waldman argues in his persuasive and timely Founding Faith: Providence, Politics & The Birth Of Religious Freedom In America, conversations about religion and its role in politics typically proceed from completely erroneous misconceptions. "The culture wars," writes Waldman, "have so warped our sense of history that we typically have a very limited understanding of how we came to have religious liberty."' (New York Post article). media-underground.net
'The image of the 21st century woman is confident, prosperous, glowing with health and beauty. But for many of the 3.3 billion female occupants of our planet, the perks of the cyber age never arrived. As International Women's Day is celebrated today, they continue to feel the age-old lash of violence, repression, isolation, enforced ignorance and discrimination.' (Toronto Star article). media-underground.net
Monday, March 17. 2008
'"The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself." Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837, but his words echo with painful prescience in today's very different United States. Americans are in serious intellectual trouble - in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.' (Washington Post article). media-underground.net
Tuesday, March 11. 2008
'Earlier this year, two important scientific studies were published that pulled the rug out from under the biofuels movement, and market. First, a Swiss government study (Zah, et al.) determined that biofuels were worse than fossil fuels in terms of total environmental impact, because cultivation of biofuels was driving the destruction of natural ecosystems for agriculture.' (World Changing article). media-underground.net
Sunday, March 9. 2008
'U.S. postal authorities have approved more than 10,000 law enforcement requests to record names, addresses and other information from the outside of letters and packages of suspected criminals every year since 1998, according to U.S. Postal Inspection Service data.
'In each of those years, officials approved more than 97% of requests to record the information during criminal inquiries. In 2004, 2005 and 2006, the most recent year provided, officials granted at least 99.5% of requests, according to partial responses to inquiries filed by USA Today under the Freedom of Information Act.' (USA Today article). media-underground.net
Saturday, March 8. 2008
'Several thousand law enforcement agencies are creating the foundation of a domestic intelligence system through computer networks that analyze vast amounts of police information to fight crime and root out terror plots.
'These network efforts will begin expanding further this month, as some local and state agencies connect to a fledgling Justice Department system called the National Data Exchange, or N-DEx. Federal authorities hope N-DEx will become what one called a "one-stop shop" enabling federal law enforcement, counterterrorism and intelligence analysts to automatically examine the enormous caches of local and state records for the first time.' (Washington Post article). media-underground.net
Thursday, March 6. 2008
'High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.
'Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time & Mind journal of philosophy.' (Yahoo News article). media-underground.net
Wednesday, March 5. 2008
'People who are new to Zen practice have all kinds of weird ideas about the state of nonthinking. Some people envision it as a trippy, spaced-out sort of thing. I’ve even heard the term mushiryo (not thinking) consciousness thrown around as if it were some way-cool, mysterious altered state. Some people are even scared by the idea.
'It isn’t like that, folks. Not only does it feel real nice to stop thinking, it’s not nearly as difficult as people want to make it.' (UTNE article). media-underground.net
Tuesday, March 4. 2008
'Twenty-five years ago I took my first dose of LSD. The experience was so rich and profound, coupled as it was with the meeting of my future wife, Allyson, that there seemed nothing more important than this revelation of infinite love and unity. Being an artist, I felt that this was the only subject worthy of my time and attention. Spiritual and visionary consciousness assumed primary importance as the focal point of my life and art. My creative process was transformed by my experience with entheogens.' (Giai Media article). media-underground.net
Saturday, March 1. 2008
'Psychologist Philip Zimbardo has seen good people turn evil, and he thinks he knows why.
'Zimbardo will speak Thursday afternoon at the TED conference, where he plans to illustrate his points by showing a three-minute video, obtained by Wired.com, that features many previously unseen photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.' (Wired article). media-underground.net
Wednesday, February 27. 2008
'On Saturday, February 23, 2008, after more than a decade of hard work, Dr. John Halpern conducted the first experimental session in his study of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in twelve subjects with treatment-resistant anxiety associated with advanced-stage cancer. Dr. Halpern is also conducting a major five-year NIDA-funded study into the neurocognitive risks of heavy use of Ecstasy, enhancing his ability to balance the risks and benefits of MDMA.' (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies website). media-underground.net
Tuesday, February 26. 2008
'A Pew survey of 35,000 Americans shows that more than a quarter of adults have left the religious affiliations from their childhoods. The group that has gained the most from this shift is the unaffiliated: those who are atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular.' (Technoccult article). media-underground.net
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