Ethics of Boosting Brainpower Debated by Researchers

"In addition to drugs, Illes said that modern brain imaging techniques may reveal aspects of personality such as a tendency to lie or be aggressive. As the technology improves doctors must decide who should have access to this information and whether they should treat a neural tendency rather than an actual behavior."

Francis Fukuyama, author of the well-intentioned but cowardly "Our Posthuman Future," is mentioned here. Click here to read my review of his book.

First-Ever Hurricane Forms in South Atlantic

"The first hurricane ever reported in the south Atlantic swirled off the coast of Brazil on Friday, and forecasters said it could make landfall in the South American country during the weekend."

Same as it ever was . . . Same as it ever was . . .

Damnit. I can't get Morrissey's "Irish Blood, English Heart" out of my head.

Product of the day . . .

Today I had the pleasure of using the XLERATOR, the most amazing hand-dryer I've ever encountered. Featuring stylish ergonomic design and infra-red activation, the XLERATOR issues a sustained blast of warm air that visibly dimples the flesh on your hands, drying with such industrious force that it's actually startling. I suspect Lockheed had something to do with designing this thing. Wow.

This is great. Get your ass over to subservientchicken.com.

What I'm reading: "Flesh and Machines" by Rodney Brooks. Thesis: The barrier between the organic and the inanimate is going to start blurring awfully quickly. Tell me something I didn't know.





What I'm listening to: "More Songs About Buildings and Food" by Talking Heads. This record didn't exactly do anything for me the first couple times I listened to it. Now it's stuck in my brain. David Byrne's voice is narcotic.

Today is a bright, sunny day, so of course the Street Preacher was outside Pottery Barn yelling his head off. His (?) children have been trained to hand out gospel tracts, so you have to thread your way carefully while in his presence. It really struck me today what a lame street preacher this guy is. I paused and actually listened to him for a few moments while waiting for a walk light; he seemed particular unsure about what he was railing about. I heard him yell: "You can be Born Again twice! [pause] Three times!" Like it's an amusement park ride . . . which I suppose isn't a completely bad analogy.

If I ever start audioblogging, you can bet I'll webcast this idiot.

I'm wrestling with the prospect of taking out an Internet personal ad. If there's one thing I've learned about romance, it's that drinking coffee and reading is terrible way to find it. I've actually tried online personals before but with disappointing results. But perhaps the biggest reason I don't like them is because they're far too time-consuming than they have any right to be. I hate wading through all those "scientific" match-maker filters, trying to locate my "type." My "type"? I have a type? Come again?

It's fair to say that all I really want when I'm browsing personal ads is to be drinking coffee and reading . . .

Hands Off! That Fact Is Mine

"Ostensibly, the Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act (HR3261) makes it a crime for anyone to copy and redistribute a substantial portion of data collected by commercial database companies and list publishers. But critics say the bill would give the companies ownership of facts -- stock quotes, historical health data, sports scores and voter lists. The bill would restrict the kinds of free exchange and shared resources that are essential to an informed citizenry, opponents say."

I hate to use the much-overused "O"-word, but this is nothing if not thoroughly Orwellian.

I suspect that if there's such thing as "God" -- or, rather, something godlike -- it will ultimately turn out to be epiphenomenal. Effect followed by cause. More accurately, cause and effect fused into a single indivisible oneness: the "implicate order" glimpsed by Bohm. Imagine a neural net conceived by M.C. Escher.

Rich Nations Gobbling Resources at an Unsustainable Rate

"Excessive consumption by the world's richest nations is making life even more difficult for the world's least fortunate, according to a new report by Redefining Progress. The U.S. based research group says the wealthiest nations are depleting global resources at an unprecedented rate -- with the United States leading the way -- and are mortgaging the future at the expense of today's children, the poor and the long term health of the planet."

It's as if we subconsciously intuit that there is no future; thus, this grotesque ecological "spending spree." There's a conspiracy theory that holds that the environment-destroying elite simply can't be this dumb and short-sighted, and that the incredibly wealthy will migrate to space colonies when Earth finally becomes unliveable.

I don't buy it. I think we really are that dumb.

That's the spirit!


Children under two 'should not watch any TV'

"Those who watched for about three hours a day were 30 per cent more likely to have attention difficulties than those watching no television."

That's the entire point of television: to reduce us to compliant drones incapable of harnessing the mind-power to form an independent thought -- and it's working awfully well. Wal-Mart! Home Depot! Budweiser! Sprint long-distance! Get out there and consume! We've got product to move! Buy, buy, buy!

"After the Martian Apocalypse" taking advance orders!

Pre-order my new book from Amazon.com. All of the cool people will be reading it. Will you be one of them?

Getting rid of the meat. Jettisoning obsolete human baggage. When to say "when"? Is there a critical threshold where the route to transhuman ascendancy takes an abrupt downward fork?

It's conceivable humans will eventually have the technology to edit their own memories, rearranging their mental furniture as casually as dragging icons across a computer desktop. Can we trust ourselves with such ability? What will we decide to delete?

Click and drag . . . Click and drag . . .

Are you sure you want to delete the contents of the Recycle Bin?

Assuming you click "yes," the you that ponders the outcome is a new and different you. Maybe not a substantially different you -- but then again, how will you ever know?





Some hobbyist technophiles buy ancient computers so they can pore over the contents of their hard drives, upon which all sorts of esoteric (and sometimes useful) data can be found languishing. I can imagine neuro-hackers 50 years from now lopping the heads off fresh corpses and purging their brains of recoverable memories. Recycling them. Sifting through the sensory debris of subjective centuries. Blood from a stone.

Maybe this has already happened. Maybe I'm already dead and someone is simply rummaging through the contents of my brain. Looking for something, perhaps. Or maybe simply for the vicarious hacker thrill: What did this guy think about? Talk about voyeurism; it doesn't get any more intimate than that.

More disturbing is the prospect that probing a nonliving mind can actually trick the dead person's synapses into a spurious sense of autonomy -- the tragic misconception that this is real when in fact reality bears no resemblance to the images and sensations triggered by the scanning process. And what is consciousness, really, but a sensation?

Dead frogs can be made to jump by jolts of electricity applied to the right muscles in the proper sequence. In a strictly biomechanical sense, the frog is tugged back in time, restored to a clumsy semblance of functionality. A dormant human brain may not be as sacrosanct as we assume. "Dead" brains may even be a valuable commodity for a near-future information economy.

So what do we call this technologically assisted parody of thought? Can the brain being hacked be made to experience new stimuli or is it read-only-memory? Perhaps more pertinently, is there a qualitative difference between the thoughts of a living brain and the synaptic acrobatics of a dead brain commanded to believe it's actually alive?

If not, then the definition of "alive" begs redefinition. As proponents of cryonic suspension are justly fond of pointing out, it certainly wouldn't be the first time in medical history that we've been forced to revise our criteria for death.

Americans Slaughtering Civilians in Fallujah

"As I was there, an endless stream of women and children who'd been sniped by the Americans were being raced into the dirty clinic, the cars speeding over the curb out front as their wailing family members carried them in."

Well, military service does involve some, ah, moral compromises . . . But hey -- it helps pay for your college education!

Today's "Zippy" is the perfect complement to my conflicted outlook, epitomized by that reference to futility and psychological anesthesia.





Bill Griffith says it much better than I did, by the way.

I just got the following strange email . . .

I am Bill Godsey in Memphis. I have a full audio video text documentary graphic back to 1895 family photo and a fifty year plus movie 1947 thru present and last phase digital video 2003- 2009. I have 11111 plus songs and ability to be one man sound man and band with live playing and singing , where I cover 1877 edison mary had a little lamb and then take the audience thru recorded forms up to now, followed by expanding primitive to spaceplex in perspective.I am in Memphis an am 44 this summer, having recorded wth the likes of RIngo Starr for 4 weeks as production assistant. There is a big show possible in Millington with 350, 000 to celebrate 50 years of independent record companies cutting a chart hit, that's allright mama I can elaborate more with your contacting me.

This message is so out-of-the-blue and unnecessarily cryptic that it almost reads like some sort of secret code. Am I supposed to believe that this guy's memorized/written 11,1111 songs and, moreover, counted them? "That's allright mama"? WTF?

Today was . . . pleasant. New furniture in my apartment lobby after months of tedious remodeling. The chatter of Starbucks patrons. A not altogether unpleasant day at work.

And yet -- that persistent feeling that I'm wading through a clever hologram . . . that all is a solipsistic delusion that could come crashing to pieces at any moment, like a film committed to brittle Celluloid.

I will myself numb so that I can't feel the blade cleaving my brain into pieces.

Steven Bassett is running in a mock election. If he gets enough support he gets to appear on Showtime or something. Check out his stand on the "issues." I voted. Did you?

George Bush and the Rise of Christian Fascism

"Ominous signs are all around us concerning the accrual of power into the hands of the Presidency. If Mr. Bush stays in office I think our future will continue to witness shrinking political rights, financial collapse and endless war. Part of the power and seduction of this administration emerges from its diabolical manipulation of Christian rhetoric."

Specifically, Bush is in dire need of an Armageddon fix to vindicate his morbidly simplistic view of reality. And his cronies have the power to deliver on command.

A few minutes ago I noticed that my cats were staring oddly at nothing in particular, or perhaps at each other in preparation for one of their frequent good-natured duels. As I waited for one of them to make the first move (my money was on Spook, the oldest), I noticed that they had become enraptured by a longish, many-legged something that had somehow managed to penetrate my ninth-floor apartment.

Suddenly this insectile phantasm started skittering my way; I mustered the courage to stomp it before it could disappear beneath any furniture. I examined the thing's flaccid corpse (antennae still flexing listlessly) before I disposed of it. It was roughly an inch long, with about six legs on either side of its disturbingly meaty body.

The perverse thing is that my cats spent several minutes in a state of denial. They missed the horrid thing. They staked out the area where it had made its last stand and scraped pitifully at the carpet in a futile attempt at feline necromancy.





Other than the bug incident, this was an uneventful Easter. I slept late, started Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere" and managed the singular task of microwaving a jumbo bean-and-cheese burrito without the ends messily exploding.

Media Coverage of Iraq Called "Shameful" By Peers

"In the ongoing Iraq conflict, there is a growing realization among mainstream newsmen that they have failed the American public, but the U.S. military is happy with the way it controlled information through its program of embedding journalists with soldiers."

This would make a pretty good T-shirt:

"Memes are for pussies; real men use propaganda!"

And no, I didn't make that up.





But I did post two new book reviews on my website for your enjoyment. Click here to read my take on Vintage's newly issued "Lies, Inc." (Philip K. Dick) and here to find out if Robert Silverberg's "The Alien Years" is for you.

I'm considering a late-night dash to Fred P. Ott's for salted peanuts and imported beer.

I'm an unrepentant Morrissey fan, encumbered with all of the self-deprecating, alienated trappings than come with the territory. So I'm looking forward to reading "St. Morrissey," brilliantly reviewed here. (Thanks to Sauceruney for the tip.)

"Detractors say Morrissey appeals to 'the teenager' because both he and they are contrary and self-pitying. This is of course true. But there are better qualities also at a premium in the best of the uppity adolescent and the everyday work of the Moz. A breathtakingly arrogant precociousness, a visceral impatience with the banal, the solipsistic knowing you're not like anyone else, and the vicious world-weary wit of the damned."

Q&A Sending humans to Mars

"Robots just can't answer all the questions. They can do amazing things as we've seen with Spirit and Opportunity. But humans have the ability to respond and react to information in ways that robots don't."

Tell me about it.

Area 51 Microbiologist Ready to Talk

"He is presently working on the Lotus project at Area 51 north of Las Vegas, in a secret extra-budget operation under the umbrella direction of a non-elected shadow international governing body that has covert ties to the U.S. government and with extra-terrestrials."

This looks suspiciously like a new installment in the "Silent Invasion" mythos to me.





Spaced Out on the Interplanetary Internet

"Interplanetary telecommunication needs an upgrade. That's the aim of the Interplanetary Internet, an effort to extend the capabilities of cyberspace to outer space. And while a '.mars' address is quite a few years off, the latest InterPlaNet research may have a dramatic impact on Earth-based connectivity as well."

"Dot-mars." Cool.

I've been invited to write something for New World Disorder. Anything I want, if I understood correctly. I've got this idea for an alien invasion story -- a potentially unique alien invasion story -- that might work . . .




Fun fact: You can actually make out my apartment in this picture.


The idea occurred to me while sitting next to the J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain this afternoon. The fountain just came on a day or so ago. While I was sitting there drinking coffee and watching it, the water abruptly shut off; apparently the pipes were being tested. But since I was one of maybe four or five people present I felt a distant, completely irrational sense of responsibility -- as if my very presence had caused the tireless columns of water to vanish.

I get a similar feeling when I walk under a light that happens to flicker out the moment I'm beneath it. The other night, for instance, a streetlight winked out while I crossed the street, as if acknowledging my existence by offing itself. A ritual sacrifice; the inanimate humbling itself in the august presence of the stridently organic . . .

Tell me I'm the anchor of my own ascension.
Tell me I'm a tourist in the 4th dimension?

--R.E.M., "Animal"

The Universe as a hologram

"Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart. Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others to offer even more radical explanations."

I was first really turned onto the universe-as-hologram concept by Michael Talbot's highly engaging "The Holographic Universe," a book I consider must-reading for anyone who gives a damn about what reality actually is -- or isn't.

At the end of Gregory Benford's "In the Ocean of Night," the astronaut hero experiences an epiphany (via an alien computer discovered buried on the Moon) that dissolves his sense of separateness from the Cosmos; he suddenly experiences everything as a unified Now, observed and observer forged into a single entity.

I wonder if we can achieve this without ET intervention. Really achieve it, in a way that makes us recoil in visceral horror at the way we routinely abuse ourselves and our environment. A person wholly aware of his quantum-entanglement with the universe (a universe that just happens to encapsulate his mind and body) would certainly be an improvement on the current breed.

Visionary physicist David Bohm proposed a new syntax designed to eliminate the illusion of duality. I don't foresee it becoming popular, but he was thinking in the right direction. Bohm's experimental language reminds me of William Burroughs' tireless attempts to "rub out the word." Words, after all, are artifacts, pale substitutes for reality . . .





Or are they? As a writer, or at least as someone who writes, I have a certain affinity for them. Reading a choice passage from a William Gibson novel has the ability to heighten sensory experience by juxtaposition; good writing rewires your brain, gently forces you to see the world anew, if only for a moment.

Burroughs considered Egyptian hieroglyphics a superior alternative to the written word. But even a graphical language fails to capture the quantum unity that Bohm sought. I suspect that beyond "deep structure" there is an existential lingua franca; instead of representing something else, it simply is, resolute and abiding, antedating attempts to share experience via words and images. It's the Cosmos' own source code, the white light of creation, mistakenly anthropomorphosized and deified.

Sites of the day . . .

Exit Mundi. A near-endless fount of global disaster scenarios. My kind of thing!





Paul Anderson's The Meridiani Journal. Another Mars blog! How did I miss this?





Genomixer. DNA-based music.

Computers to be 'oxygen of the future'

"By the year 2010, scientists predict we will be immersed in a sea of miniature computers."





See, this is where it starts. (See post on substrate-hopping electronic viruses.)

By now, supporters of my bid for the presidency are probably wondering: "But where can I purchase official Mac Tonnies for President merchandise?"

I've got your answer right here. (Thanks to Katmak.)

Some of you may also be asking: "Does he have a running mate yet?"

In fact, I do. And a capable one, at that -- Chapel Perilous' own Bsti. I might break the mold and recruit additional, back-up running mates. Inquire within.

The automated Google ads at the top of this blog do a remarkable job of capturing the Posthuman Blues milieu. I just checked and found the following:

Natural Anti-Anxiety
Herbal Remedy For Anxiety
twilight zone
nuclear bomb

Yeah, that's PB in a nutshell . . .

I'd like to take this opportunity to announce my "write-in" candidacy for President of the United States. I haven't decided on a running mate yet. I might just do without one. Seriously: Who cares? "Politics" is simply a convenient label for the process by which stark realities are assigned numbers and filed away for the benefit of speech-writers.

By now you're probably telling yourself, "I bet Mac would make an ideal President -- but where does he stand on the issues?" I think that's a fair question. But before I start in on a bunch of nebulous political concerns (of which I honestly know quite little), I think it's fair to examine these vague, frequently abstruse, self-perpetuating phenomena we call "issues."

What, exactly, constitutes an "issue"? And why do we keep hearing about the same "issues" every four years? Granted, I have no former experience in the political arena, but it seems to me that the defining nature of an "issue" is its subsequent resolution. The fact that the so-called "issues" that dominate presidential elections are never satisfactorily resolved strikes me as extremely curious. If I didn't know any better, I'd even consider the possibility that there's an implicit vested interest in perpetuating various problematic "issues" so that voters can be more easily manipulated.

I also hear a great deal about "values." You're probably wondering right now where I stand on the issue of values. (And yes, as far as I can discern, the very prospect of "values" constitutes an "issue" of its own; conversely, "issues" can take the form of a pressing "value." I think. It's all quite complicated. And again -- it often seems as if this state of near-terminal abstraction is willfully perpetuated, like a gear in a machine that's lovingly oiled lest the entire mechanism come screaming to a disastrous halt.)

Forgive me for sounding cavalier, but my stand on the "issues" is that there are no issues, at least as popularly conceived. I think issues are flimsy thought-viruses, mere gears in the electoral machine. Deeming something an "issue" is a way of distancing oneself from it.

As President, I'll do away with "issues." Completely.

New Evidence Bush Pushed Iraq War Right After 9/11

"The White House continues to deny that the president immediately began planning an invasion of Iraq in the days after 9/11, calling such charges 'revisionist history' and claiming Iraq was 'to the side' immediately after the attacks. But new revelations by a former top British official confirm that, immediately after 9/11, President Bush started planning to use the terrorist attacks as a justification for war in Iraq, despite having no proof that Iraq had any connection to Al Qaeda or 9/11."

Russian "Flying Saucers" to Grace American Skies

"You might not have to go to New Mexico to see a UFO -- flying saucers are coming to your home skies, thanks to Russian aircraft designers. The U.S. Naval Air Systems Command has signed an agreement with Russia's EKIP Aviation concern to cooperate in the production of unique flying saucer-shaped aircraft developed in Russia, perfect for putting out forest fires and monitoring oil pipelines."

Putting out fires and monitoring pipelines. Right. It's an invasion!

Environment 'stunts young brains'

"The brains of children in many parts of Europe are suffering greater damage from environmental risks than previously recognised, scientists say."

Maybe, from an economic-industrial perspective, "stunting young brains" is actually a fortuitous by-product. Stunt enough young brains with toxins and maybe those kids won't ask questions or file class-action lawsuits when they're dying of cancer thirty years from now.

Today I bought "Neverwhere" by Neil Gaiman in mass-market paperback. Why? Because I see his blurbs for other authors everywhere. From China Mieville's "Perdido Street Station" to William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition," Gaiman has the genre covered. And from the various blurbs I've read about Gaiman's own work, I'm convinced he must be good. I remember someone (probably in a coffeeshop) telling me how good "American Gods" was; if "Neverwhere" lives up to its reviews, I'll eventually have to read that, too.

You know the old "Twilight Zone" (or was it "The Outer Limits"?) where the guy seals himself in a bomb-proof safe and weathers a nuclear holocaust so he can spend the rest of his days reading . . . and then breaks his glasses? I feel for that guy. I relate.

That's why I have shatterproof lenses.

It's hard to believe it's been nine years since the "alien autopsy" footage debuted on television. That's longer than the interval between Morrissey albums. Still no answers.




Have you seen me?


Even though the footage is ancient by contemporary standards, we still don't know who filmed it, or what, exactly, it depicts. An actual dissection of a nonhuman entity? A bit of psy-ops esoterica? Human experimentation?

There's credible reason to believe the footage has existed since the 1960s. I personally doubt it has anything to do with 1947's "Roswell Incident" -- but that doesn't mean that it's not "real." But "real" in what sense?

Bush attacks environment 'scare stories'

"The Observer has obtained a remarkable email sent to the press secretaries of all Republican congressmen advising them what to say when questioned on the environment in the run-up to November's election. The advice: tell them everything's rosy."

This means war.

I just coined a new term . . . Spangst: the state induced by wading through unacceptable quantities of unsolicited email. (The techno-intelligentsia will be saying it in no time!)

While most debilitating viruses are crafted, Frankenstein-like, by conniving hackers, the Internet is aswarm with the hardy remnants of a silicon ecology that -- so far -- only occasionally manages to precipitate dire alerts in the pages of non-specialty newspapers.

But the problem is escalating. I read somewhere that email as we know it may fall out of favor due to memory-eating deluges of spam. I like to think that's so much wringing of slightly neophobic hands. In any case, what can replace email? And spam, for all of its ugly excess, is for the most part consciously perpetuated by humans -- members of a species whose caprices we can at least begin to identify and comprehend.

If the Internet is ultimately incapacitated, I predict digital "wildlife" will be responsible. As computers and Internet connections become more varied and versatile, new viruses will emerge, the binary equivalent of SARS and BSE. Aspiring viruses will engage in incredibly selective Darwinian competition, breeding fierce new strains that may well prove uncrackable and worryingly alien.

Computation will continue to thrive alongside efforts to link the nervous system directly to the Net. Which means that we may be faced with a crop of particularly savvy viruses capable of jumping the "substrate barrier" -- existing as smatterings of machine code in one instant and manifesting as flesh-and-blood symptoms the next.





The transition from chip to meat isn't likely to have a high success rate -- at first. But as viruses learn from experience, a dire and unwanted compatibility may emerge. The battle will have migrated from the abstract realm of "cyberspace" to the trauma wards of hospitals.

The first "transgenic" viruses will probably be hobbyist variations of DARPA-inspired electronic warfare programs, good for little more than brute-force nerve damage. As we augment our organs with ever-more flexible, user-friendly electronics, we bore a tunnel from the organic world to the intricate havens of machine-life, redefining cherished philosophical notions and making ourselves newly vulnerable.

As technology improves, so do the stakes. Transgenic viruses will be no more content to cause random, superficial damage than human hackers content to merely cripple a mainframe when they have the capacity to enter it and seek the informational gems within. Enter the age of "neurophreaking" and identity wars, viruses that incubate in the snarl of meat and silicon behind your forehead in order to profile your habits and consumer preferences.

Most "smart" transgenic viruses will have roots in today's Internet spyware. Others will seek to actively take over their victim's nervous system, if only for brief periods. In theory, strangers could be selected and stealthily programmed to act as terrorists. Or commanded to sympathize with a given cultural or political agenda. The motives behind the viral siege will be thoroughly familiar to anyone who's screened pop-up ads or been forced to install expensive firewalls.

But how to firewall a human being, granted that a human being can be identified by the arsenal of synapses and circuits lurking in his or her central nervous system? And what happens once the digital ecology threatens to slip beyond our control, just as spam now threatens the viability of online communication?

Substrate-hopping viruses will arguably make a bid for dominant species-hood in the next couple hundred years. What plans might they have for humanity?

Posthuman Blues now has an RSS feed

http://posthumanblues.blogspot.com/atom.xml

"This is an Atom formatted XML site feed. It is intended to be viewed in a Newsreader or syndicated to another site. Please visit the Blogger Knowledge Base for more info."

Man, I feel hip.

Breaking Mars news! Spirit rover destroyed in Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) mishap.

(QuickTime required.)

Yohimbe Tree Bark Could Revolutionize Treatment of Anxiety Disorders

"Anxiety disorders affect about 19 million Americans per year, consuming about one-third of total U.S. mental health costs of $148 billion in 1990. They include obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, social phobia, post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder and specific phobias. Although these diseases are generally not deadly, they take an enormous toll in morbidity."

Prozac. Zoloft. Xanax. Is "happiness" becoming a neuropharmacological commodity . . . ?

I know it may seem trite for the subject of a blog entry, but today was remarkably pleasant. Great weather, so I spent the afternoon strolling the Plaza, circumnavigating the giant bipedal rabbits and pausing to take a group photo for tourists who entrusted me with their camera. The world seemed anomalously shiny and happy.





Of course, I know damned well it's not. The biosphere is faltering. The Bush administration is lying its way to another election "victory." A new study reveals that humans are inundated with industrial neurotoxins deemed "acceptable" despite unknown long-term effects. Our "best and brightest" are committed to designing grotesque new ways to kill or disable large numbers of people while relatively small-budget projects such as the Hubble Space Telescope are abandoned due to a presumed lack of funds. I don't have a girlfriend. The bodies of American civilians are being dragged behind cars in Iraq. And to top it all off, the new "Left Behind" book just came out.

Armageddon is in the details.

Mysterious 'fairy circles' defy explanations

"The three main theories to explain the origins of the mysterious 'fairy circles' of Namibia have just been dismissed, following an in-depth study by South African researchers."

Could these African "fairy circles" have something to do with the formation of crop circles, assuming any crop circles are anything other than hoaxes?

I should have seen this coming -- assuming I'm not the victim of a particularly subversive April Fool's joke.

Even if you find the subject matter repugnant, you've got to admire the concept; I could write a wordy essay on ubiquitous electronic monitoring devices and postmodern Warholian superstardom, but I'll refrain.

The weird thing is that I feel like I'm eavesdropping. Did the subject know her corpse was going to be webcast? I'd like to think so.





And yes, I found this at Chapel Perilous (where else?).

My computer has been suffering a rash of "fatal errors." I'm a little worried.