SkeptiLog, evil twin of

I've been offline & offsite today, so after the first early-morning bulletin, I only had local storage to work with -- thus bulletin #2 is rather patched together. Hey, it'll get worse in a few days, when you'll be left to your own devises for 1.5 weeks. Hint: if some Gentle Reader donates a satellite phone into which I can plug my laptop, I can produce the bulletins year-round, wherever I am. What a prospect.

• Unemployed? Have a thirst for drugs, violence, power, deception? Apply for one of the many open positions at the LAPD -- but don't tell'em I sent you, please.
• The 'Tooth Fairy' Project collects baby teeth and assays them for Strontium-90. It's nearly as much fun as it sounds, too.
• Deux Ex Machina, the Ghost In The Machine, will tell your fortune. So why isn't that Ghost rich? [CORRECTED URL]
• Another Deux Ex Machina: The Dawn of Artificial Life! [opens new window]
• "There are no jokes" - Freud - is this grim, or what?
• The Teledildonic Installation is so... binary... Then there's the BANG: Fuck Venus, which at least has instructions. We shall not speculate as to the artist's psychic state. Shall we?

A mea culpa re: SkeptiNews bulletins: I don't check all the links I post. [blush] Yah, I'm sloppy, but unless someone donates a T1 or DSL connection, I just don't have time to review everything that looks good enough to pass on to you, dear Gentle Readers. But I generally try not to repeat stories, unless there's a significantly different take; nor to repeat links, unless the resource is unceasingly informative. If you want a real adventure, start with the earliest of the archives and work forward thru time. Be sure to call-out for some pizza. Heh.

A solemn image: Dead vehicle, honored and abandoned. [via alamut 8.Mar.2000]. Do you love / honor / worship your vehicle enough to do likewise? Should the world's landscapes be dotted with such funereal shrines? Would the machine deities be appeased? Would Judeo-Xian-Muslim mobs tear them down and burn them? Will Neo-Nazis honor VWs and scorn Trabants?

• In heaven there is no beer, that's why we drink it here.
• Program! Program! Ya can't tell yer Hermeneutics without a program!
• I like this church - sex, drugs and Nude Olympics. "Stand before God exactly as he/she created you, without shame."
• Run some early church documents back and forth through the BabelFish translator and build a new religion.
• Try the same thing with these broad-spectrum atheist texts and see what results.

A new feature here, also added to the top of the bulletins: rather than using the archive page [which initially loads slowly], here's direct access to Yesterday's bulletins.

Pollenate your mind for phun and prophet. I am the MicroSoft Developer's Network of Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. Our indispensible library will devour you. Relax, hu-man. How come, when I do a Google search for video gorilla, the first hit is on the MicroSoft home page? Do you engage in counterfactual research or thinking? Often? Click [here] to accept Jesus Christ as your personal Web Saviour. Or else. There are more Betty Page fans than you can shake a snake at. If you wanted to shake a snake, that is. Wait -- didn't I deal with that a few entries back? Check below. When you come to San Francisco be sure to take off all your clothes.

OK, I've got some major structural issues worked out here -- the archives of the SkeptiCon empire have a common access point, a bit more behind-the-scenes intensive labor has accrued, etc. It should all work better. Now I just need an audience... But I digress. I've been playing with the typefaces of this page and the online bulletins. I'm pretty happy with the way things look here, on both MSIE5 and NetNav4.5 [and even Opera is tolerable] but it's hard to get the bulletins to look just right. Ratz. Hopefully I'll approach perfection before I'm abducted by Reptilioids.

• How could I have missed CANNIBAL: The Musical when it was released? Did you?
• It's always good eatin' at the White Trash Cafe - yumsers!
• You might want to be a High Priest/Priestess or you might want a safer job, like personal counselor or game designer -- or not, as the case may be.
• Everything you always wanted to know about Canadian Postal Codes but were terrified to ask. Why?
• To build very very very very small things, a blueprint is handy. Try this one.
• If you have nothing better to do with your time, discussing philosophy can be entertaining. Yeah?
• And you thought the Coast Miwok were extinct? Tell that to my neighbors.

From whence cometh deities? Are gods created by people, aliens, robots, each other, unknowable mysteries? Whence the came the creators of the god-creators? How many deities are extant in the universe? Is the number ZERO, ONE, MORE THAN ONE, LESS THAN ONE? Is the number an integer, a fraction, real, imaginary, complex? How do you count deities? How do you verify your count? Can you say anything meaningful, verifiable, useful about deities? Do deities interfere with you? How can you tell?

• Saving The Blues? Does "The Blues" need saving? Do you?
• Download Accelerator How fast do you want/need to go? Is that all?
• How fast is your tool? [thanks, Unit4!]
• New Stephen King Novella Available Only On Net
• Martian Poles: say "cheese" and take a bite.
• There are reptoids and reptoids and reptoids and reptoids and even more reptoids than you could shake a snake at. Shake what snake? Do the Rattlesnake Shake

Still dinking around with the structure -- I should have the links back up tomorrow [Thursday]. Hopefully. Meanwhile, all the action is over at SkeptiNews. Of course. All the good links are there.

• More structural changes on this page. Life is ever in flux. Bother.
• Read about Jesus' fatal boating accident at the BASTARD SON OF THE LORD site. It's special.
• How can you live without the Alien Punching Puppets, Space Mucus and UFO Disco Light?? How can you?
• Is dork really the sixth derivative of position?
• Advertising Revulsion - commercial haters worldwide. What's your least favorite?
• Young people invent words. Old lexicographers record them. Thus has it ever been. But the words differ subtly among Anglophones.
• If it wasn't for Bad Haiku, I wouldn't have no haiku at all.

A covey of strange prophets would spring up in post-Napoleanic France, announcing the reign of the Holy Spirit and producing curious miracles such as bleeding hosts. By the 1840s a man would find that wherever he set foot, he stepped on a messiah. Ewwww...

All the latest assassination news. Get liberated with the Anarchist Theory FAQ. You do want to be freed, don't you? And you NEED protection from alien abduction! It's all here, in parts one, two, three and four. Neglect at your own risk. Martin Du Gard: warm in the poetry of skepticism, cold in that climate of doubt. Did North American intellectualism come of age in the 1960's? Is that the decade's legacy? "Don't you know we're riding On The Road To Marrakech?" [la la la]

In case you didn't notice, this site [or at least its design] is still a Work In Progress. I'm throwing in some style sheets, with a little scripting to follow, while trying to get good performance out of what now seems an inherently slow system [Pitas]. But it's free... And if you're not viewing this on MSIE4+ it may look bad. Anyway, any feedback you'd like to offer will be greatly appreciated. No death-threats, please.

"The tree of Liberty must from time to time be watered by the urine of craven cowards and traitors, tied to it and executed by firing squad." --Thos. Jefferson's secret diary

The local vintners here in Sonoma Cownty had a Barrel Tasting Weekend, ladling out dollops of their latest pre-bottling offerings to swarms of oenophiles carrying their own murky glasses from vineyard to vineyard, selling 'futures' of these esteemed products. Today was half-dank, half glorious, a good time to hurtle down Westside Road and try out some of the world's best. Armida Winery was decorated for Hallowe'en, pouring blood and plasma beneath hanging ghouls and dimly-flashing lights. Belvedere's dog-mascot Wino accosted all visitors for snacks but was only interested in pate and cheese, disdaining the bread niblets. I seem to recall ordering a case of some inexpensive yummy red at Porter Creek which I'll have to bicycle over to pick up when it's bottled. I don't remember much else. My mind was abducted. I blame the Reptilioids.

• "Everybody was Kung-Fu Dancing..."
• MOON -- eye-stalk or pistil?
• Revolutionary visual mathematics notation system - groovy graphics too.
• What planet are you going back to? Soon?
• Do you recognize any of these renaissance prints of biblical stories? How old are they? What are they worth? Are they blessed, cursed, triggering?

More politics re: US presidential campaign: I'm a registered Green. I worked for Brown and voted for Perot in '92, voted for Nader in '96. All the current prospects are repulsive, but McCain is especially so. I was almost ready to re-register GOP so I could vote for Bush in the upcoming Calif. primary -- but I can't quite twist my guts that far. So I'm disenfranchised, with a vote that'll be counted in no measure of power. Ratz. But I won't give up -- "Vote early, vote often", as old Mayor Daley used to say. The local issues are important. Go get'em.

Memories of DROP CITY -- were the 60s really like this? Must be -- I don't remember... The Panic Encyclopedia sure does define all this... postmodern... whatever... What part of the phrase Erotic Metaphors of Soviet Civilisation doesn't ring true? Robots aren't just creations, y'know. They have evolved through history and will continue to do so. You may have seen the McDonnell-Douglas Warranty Registration Card already, or maybe not. Do you need some small space clip-art for your site? I thought so. Bruce Sterling's The Hacker Crackdown seems so... eternal... now. Have you copyrighted a word list yet? Don't wait too long. If you haven't learnt all about Thought Power yet, the wireless machine that is your mind may not be tuned correctly. Otaku-Kids have been post-modern for at least a decade.

The SkeptiNews bulletins will now be online as Pitas pages, not just as a single current page on my home site. The Latest Bulletin buttons on this page will now point to the new location: skeptinews.pitas.com -- the old link will jump straight to it. Bulletins will be archived here. Older bulletins and all the SkeptiChat discussions will remain at the SkeptiChat archives. Links to the archives and other SkeptiCon/OTRSS stuff will stay in their old spots on this page. I hope this is clear. That is all. [honk]