Are you a Futurist? Are you assured that we are going to burn ourselves out as a species in the next century? Are you an artist set on using these tools we have while we have the time, or an optimist set to create an army of Nanobots (or Nanobats, if you live in Gotham) that will cure cancer?
There is room for all these perspectives and more at this years Extreme Futurist Fest (XFF for short) being held in Los Angeles. And December 21 and 22 2012! What a time for it. End of the world, man!This even will feature:
By P. Emerson Williams
An operation planned by a large international team of law enforcement working over the course of years and carried out with helicopters and machine guns in a military style raid. Taking refuge in a safe room, reportedly found "near a semi-automatic shotgun", a larger than life villain is dragged out and taken into custody. No, the target is not a drug kingpin, nor a deposed dictator (hence the safe room - sewage drains are reserved final hiding places for deposed dictators and jihadist masterminds), not a banker responsible for tearing the world economy apart, nor a corrupt Western politician on the leash of said bankers.
Much hay has been made of Kim Dotcom's expansive mansion, expensive toys and cheesy movie villain antics. For those wondering why Megaupload was the target this fact alone should make it clear. They needed someone who would not invoke sympathy, and in this respect, they chose well. A huge congratulations to our owners for selecting and directing a story in a manner that would qualify them to take the raw footage shot for a reality TV show and create a narrative. If spying on citizens and enforcing laws not yet passed loses its luster, they should have no problem getting a job with Wife Swap or Deadliest Catch. (I had to resort to google for show titles...)
Here's a nice, concise way to weave a yarn:
One Maserati
One Rolls-Royce
One Lamborghini
Three Samsung 83" Tvs
Two Sharp 108" Tvs
One "Predator statue"
60 Dell servers
An unspecified number of:
Motor bikes
Jet skis
Artwork
The takedown of megaupload is framed in the mold of major drug busts to which we have become used when presented with such a laundry list. More ingeniusly, in a fresh new year following the annum of the birth of the Occupy movement, the preceding list brings to mind the lists of bonuses, net worth and ostentatious belongings of hedge fund managers and bank executives. Our master's meme-schemers had all of us in their thoughts in the planning stages. If this is all a coincidence, why would the presence of a full-size inflatable replica of a Russian T-72 tank on Goldfinger's, uh, I mean Mr. DotCom's property be relevant to the story? What does the widespread discussion of his license plates with "POLICE," "MAFIA," "V," "STONED," "CEO," "HACKER," GOOD," "EVIL," and "GUILTY" tell us about what the law enforcement side of the story wants us to think? Like Joseph Kennedy, DotCom amassed what to the great majority of us is a vast fortune (a $200 million company isn't enough to impress our owners) through insider trading, shady schemes and outright fraud before founding the "Mega Conspiracy".
Fallen Nation Party At The World's End is a mad ride past the event horizon of sanity with a group of young, escaped mental patients that come to realize—or believe—that they are demigods. They form Babylon, a band that captures the spirit of the age as sex, drugs, and chaos reign in the final years of the American Empire.
Metaphysical spoiler: this book is a modern take on the Bacchae of Euripides, or a practical how-to guide for hedonistic end times cults.
Note about reader formats: Though I have tested this version in all the formats by computer, if there are any major errors on your reader - an error that makes it unreadable for you - please report it to me immediately and I will look into fixing it and getting you a fixed version of the book.
Have alien bacteria fossils been discovered in a meteorite by a NASA scientist?
*drumroll please*
NO!
Recap: On Friday night the “Journal of Cosmology” published an article entitled “Fossils of Cyanobacteria in CI1 Carbonaceous Meteorites: Implications to Life on Comets, Europa, and Enceladus,” attributed to one Richard B. Hoover of the NASA/Marshall SFC [1], claiming such a discovery. Extraordinary claims, however, require extraordinary evidence, which is nowhere to be found in the paper. While I am trained in and have worked in scientific fields, I am admittedly not a scientist, so I refer you to the blogs of PZ Myers [2], David Dobbs [3], and Rosie Redfield [4] for detailed analysis/straight-up debunking. In sum, per Redfield: “Executive Summary: Move along folks, there's nothing to see here.”
Look, there's nothing wrong with alternative theories – and certainly nothing wrong with leveling a critique at the scientific establishment – provided that they are supported by data and arguments that meet the epistemic criteria for scientificity. Even then, to propose an alternate theory of the origin of life is to propose a new creation myth – and as such any denunciation of the mythic nature of the consensus theory/narrative also denounces itself. And the “journal” in which Hoover's paper appeared is rife with them – whether in articles or in press releases.
So. When the controversy erupted, I found myself less interested in this article and its claims than in the “journal” itself. First red flag: the “Journal of Cosmology” is only published online on amateurish site that looks like GeoCities circa 1997 – just like every kook and conspiracy theorist's site. Second red flag: they claim to be a legitimate, peer-reviewed academic journal – and yet they demand a $35 “processing fee” to “cover costs for processing and managing the peer review process” as well as a $150 “article publication fee.” [5] No legitimate journal charges ANY such fees. Furthermore, their submission guidelines require authors to list five scientists who would be qualified to review the submitted paper. Again, unheard-of – and even more suspicious. Need I go on?
Clearly, there is an agenda. A little research into the panspermia creation myth led to the discovery that its chief proponent, Fred Hoyle, rejected the Big Bang on the same logic as his rejection of abiogenesis. Which leads me to an essay (if it can be so called) on the “Big Bang myth,” or “Big Bang Theology” that argues for an eternal universe in which black holes, which the author prefers to call “gravity holes,” recycle the universe ad infinitum. [6] Sure, the Big Bang is a modern creation myth. Big deal. However, Occam's Razor dictates that Conformal Cyclic Cosmology or a Big Bang-Big Crunch cyclic model would be vastly preferable – as infinite time infinitely multiplies entities! There are so many misunderstandings and misinterpretations of relativity, physical cosmology and even fundamental physical concepts such as inertial frames, that one doubts that the author – one Rhawn Joseph, PhD (Emeritus of the “Brain Institute” - address: Northern California (can you be more vague?)) – had any credibility before reading this joke of an article.
Does this man look like he's about anything but self-aggrandizement?
Of course, our buddy Rhawn was the first to defend Hoover's argument in a “Commentary,” which concludes: “There is no evidence life began on Earth. Life was present on this planet from the very beginning. Life on Earth has a cosmic ancestry. The preponderance of evidence demonstrates life on Earth, came from other planets. Our ancient ancestors journeyed here, from the stars.”
Why is it no surprise that a simple google search turned up an intriguing connection between this debate, ostensibly over cosmic and biological beginnings, and the only apocalyptic scenario today that is at once both more absurd and more popular in our culture than the Zombie Apocalypse: the 2012 “end of the Mayan calendar” phenomenon. The following video appeared under the by-line of Rhawn Joseph, PhD and his "institute."
To be continued... (Also see this previous post on conspiracy thinking by James Curcio.)
2012 is a meme on the tip of everyone’s tongue these days.
An an example, Daniel Pinchbeck just launched the site “Postmodern Times,” which is:
"…a series of short animated films presenting new ideas about global consciousness and techniques for social and ecological transformation. Our first episode, “Toward 2012″, introduces the project, explaining concepts from the best-selling book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006) by Daniel Pinchbeck, in the author’s own voice. Future segments will focus on shamanism, sustainability, alternative energy systems, the Mayan Calendar, quantum physics and synchronicity, human sexuality, and a host of other subjects."
This explosion, of course, is not restricted merely to Pinchbeck, though he seems to have positioned himself well atop the wave. For better or worse, it is a cultural movement, and it is happening now.
