Doug Rushkoff & Social Media

As per Jon's advice I played around with the settings on the embed code (it's hard work and the width is 1020 if you're using blogger) and as it's such a far reaching thought piece on social media and the internet I'm reposting it. I still haven't figured out how to stop the autoplay so if somebody knows how to do that I'd appreciate some feedback.

Unsettled (Updated Political Position on Zionism)

Both Israel and Gaza are two places that I intend to visit as soon as I can, as I regret not taking the chance a while back. This Louis Theroux documentary is fresh out on Youtube and as per the usual format of Theroux's affable questions in the face of extremists, it makes for compelling viewing. 

I appreciate that the subjects are all characterised as Ultra Zionists but it's evident they have the full backing of the Israeli State. Even though, and this isn't too well known, the State of Israel is one of the most atheist/agnostic countries in the world and that the peaceful yet campaigning intellectual elite live in Israel unlike the AIPAC nutters in the States manipulating legislation through lobbying backed by sheer force of disposable dollars.

Perhaps unexpectedly, I am a Zionist. I might have said something different around the Balfour Declaration but as it's a done deal it's insane to suggest anything other than that Israel has a right to exist. 

Not however, at the expense of others.

I cannot in good conscience remain pro Zionist any longer. The last bombing by Israel of Gaza with F-16 jets murdering 500 people including 50 children destroyed the Zionist project. It is doomed to fail and our task now it to figure out how the Palestinians and the peace loving Israelis can find a two state solution (or one if they wish) without the psychos who currently run Israel anywhere near the levers of power. I've been patient. Maybe too patient. Not any more. Brand Israel does not deserve to be a part of the future. When the landlines have been agreed on I want a name that doesn't make me feel nauseous to  be applied. A rebranding if you like - Charles March 2013

Groupon

Even before I heard about this execution this morning, I saw a tweet in my stream from the agency Crispin Porter Bogusky congratulating the work that went into it and thought immediately that it sounded like the self congratulatory pep talk of adland that probably wouldn't reflect the quality of the ad. I was disappointingly right.

It was then followed with a flurry of tweets on Groupon's poor taste. I used to like CPB when Alex Bogusky was there as I think he understood the nature of controversial attention securing comms, though it seems since he left standards have plummeted and in many ways this whole ad is a short allegory for the wealth of the United States which is built on the exploitation and suffering of others round the world.

Things People Don't Say About Advertising

Isn't it ironic that advertising hasn't picked up on the growing satire of reckless growth advertising in social media? More over here.

Zizek on Egypt

Zizek saves his most explosive logic till the end in relation to Israel's hand wringing over Egypt. He asks that since the decline of suicide bombings in Israel over the last five years has increased the velocity of stolen land off the Palestinians, has Israel tacitly proved that terror is the only language it respects?

Heat Wave

The problem with the sun as it was once put to me is that nobody can put a meter on it and bill us. Which is why renewable energy is not about the science. It's about us and what we think is more important. Money today or survival tomorrow. There is an interesting side discussion here about the accessibility of young people to potentially shocking technology in the future but again it's less about the technology and more about why do we not trust our children with danger. Maybe it's because we let the Pentagon get first access to any scientific discoveries we make. How can we weaponize space (as is being done) and then lecture about good and evil? More on the "Death Ray" below over here.

Cult Buddhism?

Interesting photojournalism article in Foreign Policy on Wat Dhammakaya in Thailand. Worth a look for the extraordinary photography.

Open Source DNA (LSD & Francis Crick)

I had no idea how Byzantine and Machiavellian the plot for discovery of the double helix structure of DNA was. This is a must see. Regrettably for spoon-fed Nanny United States TV documentaries, the crucial 'visionary' moment of Francis Crick's use of LSD, where the structure revealed itself to him (built on Rosalind Franklin's shared contribution) is not mentioned. The important fact can only be alluded to at the end where Crick talks briefly about the mysteries of space and time, though it's well know he devoted the rest of his career to dreams.

What would make the story really incredible would be if anybody confirmed that it was Linus Pauling's son who gave them the LSD while working with Watson and Crick even though his twice awarded Nobel prize winning father was flat out competing with them on the other side of the Atlantic. That would be symmetry to the narrative that would make Rosalind's reluctant partner Maurice Wilkins at Kings College the rightful father of open source scientific discovery as it was he who believwed most in sharing information.

Just look at Linus' son in this documentary and ask yourself. Is this the kind of West Coast rebellious son of a Chemist, who in the late 50's could have dropped acid, and might have introduced it to the Cambridge genius of Crick thereby unwittingly working against his father who put him there in the first place? * Ahem. 

*(Pure speculation on my part)

Update: The original video was removed so a "related" video has been posted instead.

Fail Whale

Via failwhale

Is This A Meme?

Answers over at ....

Marko Rodin - Vortex Mathmatics (Toroidal Power)

I thought about this for two days before posting it. I was just looking for a logical explanation why sacred geometry seems to be so compelling. I'm a person who takes an interest in Mandelbrot Sets and those Mandalas I was referring to earlier; Marko Rodin explained in the first few minutes of this four hour presentation. A lot of you might feel uncomfortable with the anti materialist science rhetoric which if that's the case then just stick to the math, that he confidently delivers upon. 

However for a discovery that he refuses to commercialise and wishes to be an open source gift for sustainable energy development I think that anti materialist science stance is an act of nobility and truth. Give it a couple of minutes if you can. What I could understand the first time round watching this blew my temporal lobe. 

Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist was much more useful for me the second time round than the first. It compelled me to drill down into topics I don't really have enough time for till cloning is on the table but the result of that work was happily fruitful and in some ways releases some spare tick over capacity I'd probably cordoned off subconsciously when asking that really boring question. Who am I?

I still ask of course but some of the chronology has been taken off my shoulders.

I learned that the producer of Zeitgeist relented to the inquisition for his full name and gave the interview above. He's got two things going for him. He's young and he's rapaciously clever. I only know that because I was getting hammered and laid in bars at his age. I'm a late bloomer. He works in advertising sometimes so I thought that was interesting. 

His name is Peter.

Sean Dorrance Kelly & The Sacred

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Sean Dorrance Kelly
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> Video Archive

Sean is a philosphy professor at Harvard. He's cut from fresher cloth than the usual backwash though his sporting analogies are distinctly U.S thematic and about to be as evolutionarily crucial as the appendix. That doesn't mean they don't matter. It just means it doesn't count. Still worth viewing for asking a great question.

What Did My Dimethyltryptamine Experience Look Like

My first instinct when looking at this graphic was 'holy shit' is that a Harmaline graphic? It looks more molecular and without the geometric lines of the Mandala (see below) through a 5-MeO-dimethyltryptamine or Dimethyltryptamine entheogen concave lens (I don't fully know the difference, but I've read up on it enough to attempt to at least theorize).

But no it's not quite the Mandala above. It's more the Wired article about a 3D nano X-Ray of a virus protein.... Which isn't totally out of the game, though what caught my eye was the line by Stanford University Physicist Martin Seibert:  “Growing one of these crystals can be worth a Nobel”. Here's the DMT Molecule.

The intellectual model of my DMT experience during the short duration that lasted minutes not hours is not easy to condense. It was so extraordinary it took me three days to remember the bare essentials and six months to assimilate the shreds of information I could recollect. Above is a tiny hint of the colour and geometric palette I don't mind using as a speck of suggestion.  It doesn't come close to the intensity of colour experienced or the suspension of time and dare I say it, non three dimensional space. It's an entheogenic experience and not to be taken lightly. 

I've not had the courage to try it again after over a year since my one and only experiment. The journey was transdimensional but coming back to the reality on this level took ten minutes or so. It was brutal, coming round and back to 3 dimensionality. I thought I'd gone insane. Cognitively it was like living in a Bugs Bunny cartoon running backwards. Emotionally it was as psychology battering as I imagine say male on male rape to be. Couple that with the paranoia of a SWAT team of psychic entities swooping in to arrest me and frankly I was OK to take the strait jacket and be carted off to the comfort and security of a padded cell.

However, I came back with a saucer full of secrets that changed everything. I was shown things. I don't know who was doing the showing.

I would do things differently if I go back. Set and setting. Lower dose. Meditation beforehand. I would pray to the Universe 'please be gentle on me'.

I'll write up the actual experience shortly. I've been wanting to do it for a long time. All I've talked about here is colour and geometry. There's a lot of depth and breadth across many subjects in the 20 or so minutes I was dimensionally elsewhere. A long time according to the DMT testimonies on the net but still incredibly short compared to Ayahuasca or Psilocybin.

Counterculture

I like counterculture. The assumption we can draw from it is, as Terence McKenna asserted,   culture is not your friend. I blogged earlier about the counterculture nature of Stanford computing in the sixties though I still need to elaborate a lot more on the Mother of all demos as that's the fascinating output of the experiment, and one that remains with us today. The mouse in your hand for example.

I'm not a huge Stewart Brand disciple. Maybe it was the presentation I saw by an ex planner in San Francisco a couple of years back that was a bit too worthy. I'm also not entirely in accord with Stewart Brand's apparent submission to materialistic science. However he's a good guy and has a written an interesting piece and it's too good an opportunity to let a great Marshall McLuhan quote go by from that text.

JI: The last chapter of Whole Earth Discipline is on statecraft. You start it with the Marshall McLuhan quote: ‘After Sputnik there is no nature, only art’. What significance does that statement have in relation to the responsibilities of governance and policymaking?

SB: It’s probably the most radical comment he ever made. Sputnik was shorthand for acting at a planetary scale. We consequently bear a completely different relation to everything on Earth and can no longer treat it, meaning nature, as existing independent of our own artifice – our own purposeful intentions.

Via Preoccupations

Was Mona Lisa a Ladyboy?

Full article in The Telegraph in case you also missed yesterday's article on Thai transsexual airline cabin staff now being employed. 

Is The Telegraph becoming poly-sexual or something?

Is the Thai Prime Minister a British Subject?

American Symbology

This is an excellent (and academically authoritative) history on American symbology. I had no idea of the full extent of mystical symbolism in the setting up of the American Republic and if you can forgive the melodramatic title of the video you're in for educational treat.

Just Say Know

The Swanson Pyramid Of Greatness