Trevor Paglen talk 8PM @ the Machine Project L.A.

Secret Black-ops Iron-ons, and the Wrath of KHAN! this weekend at Machine

[Update 11/1/15 Trevor Paglen at Artsy.]

On  Friday, May 23rd at 8pm, geographer and artist  Trevor Paglen  will be giving a talk on the network of hidden budgets, state secrets, covert military bases, and disappeared people that military and intelligence insiders call the "black world." Suprisingly, these "black sites" and non-existent military installations have also given rise to an incredible catalog of black-ops iron-on membership patches that have to be seen to be believed. Trevor recently compiled these patches into a book called  I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have To Be Destroyed By Me, which can be seen (and may be for sale?) at the event.http://www.machineproject.com/  1200 D North Alvarado StreetLos Angeles, CA 90026213-483-8761

WIT, william irwin thompson surfaces! with his journal

WIT!  william irwin thompson's  journal!

On Religion and the State 4/26/2008


For as long as it takes a Tyrannosaurus Rex to devolve into a chicken, just so long will we have to wait for religion to scale down into a harmless nourishment for the soul. Then again, considering cock fights in Latin America, maybe the chicken isn't so chicken after all.  It is just smaller than we are.  So how long do we have to wait before religion becomes spiritually smaller than we are?  Judging by the recent exposures of the geriatric fundamentalist Mormon sect in Texas and the Pope's recent damage control on priests' child molestation, we  have a long wait ahead of us.  continued here  

hoax of myths of WWII update!

May 13, 2008An interview with  Nicholson Baker  author ofHuman Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization.Baker delivers a deeply moving indictment of the treasured myths that have romanticized much of the 1930s and '40s. Incorporating meticulous research and well-documented sources – including newspaper and magazine articles, radio speeches, memoirs, and diaries – the book juxtaposes hundreds ofinterrelated moments of decision, brutality, suffering, and mercy.  

The San Francisco EcoCity Declaration see Paolo Soleri honored too!

The San Francisco Ecocity Declaration

An ecocity is an ecologically healthy city. Into the deep future, the cities in which we live must enable people to thrive in harmony with nature and achieve sustainable development. People oriented, ecocity development requires the comprehensive understanding of complex interactions between environmental, economic, political and socio-cultural factors based on ecological principles. Cities, towns and villages should be designed to enhance the health and quality of life of their inhabitants and maintain the ecosystems on which they depend.http://ecocity.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/san-francisco-ecocity-declaration/

Said a friend recently, "We hear about Paolo Soleri so infrequently these days, why do you keep mentioning him as a key person in your career, anyway?"  "My career?  Should be everybody's survival, not just one individual's career."

By Richard Register

Paolo SoleriPaolo Soleri is one of the three most important people of the 20th century, and leading into the 21st century now.    xxxxX Says  Soleri, though developing the theory in a language that most people couldn't read – or didn't want to think about – said it most succinctly in the title of one of his books: "The Bridge Between Matter and Spirit is Matter Becoming Spirit."  This sounds puzzling to most people but simply means that evolution delivers changes in a particular pattern in which people now play a crucial role giving rise to higher levels of integration, physically and thereby spiritually, if spirit means higher levels of consciousness and conscience in us humans and heading toward whatever may come in moving in that direction into the unknown reaches of future evolution.  http://ecocity.wordpress.com/tag/paolo-soleri/

 

 http://www.weeklysignals.com/audioarchives.html  

an Obsolete 'Mind' blown by interview with JLL

from ODEO site on JLLComparative mythologist, author and teacher John Lash is one of the foremost exponents of the power of myth to direct and shape an individual's life, as well as history itself."Sometimes a book changes the world. Not In His Image is such a book. It is clear, stimulating, well-researched, and sure to outrage the experts. Take it from a scientist: the "˜experts' are often wrong. In fact, a hallmark of breakthroughs is that they are usually well-researched and outrage "˜experts.'    http://odeo.com/show/2574413/view

 

 http://www.weeklysignals.com/audioarchives.html

REBOOT NOW! conf. in Aug. 02-09 Portugal!

ok

Reboot Now

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

R. Buckminster Fuller

Time urges! Around the world we see signs of severe stress on our interlocked global economic, environmental and social systems and the time for a well-planned transition to a sustainable system is presenting itself. We need to gather perspectives and visions for the new millennium, providing on one hand for the sharing of information, knowledge, technologies and on the other hand, offering effective possibilities of continuity for the proposals that seek a viable future for the human species. There are solutions!

This is Reboot Now

http://www.rebootnow.org/speakers/speakers.shtml

BOOM! Festival upcoming in Aug. 11-18. Portugal.

ok

Boom Dates Revealed

The Boom dates are revealed. Once again the festival is in sync with the August full moon.
The beautiful shores of the Idanha-a-Nova lake will be the venue of Boom Festival for the fourth time. From August 11 to 18 the Boom 7th edition will take place with a avant-garde programme of arts, culture, sustainability, free expression and knowledge. The gates will open on the 11th of August and will close on the 18th.

Tickets are limited, we advise you to purchase the ticket as soon as possible as prices increase as time goes by. Tickets are available throughout the Boom Ambassadors network or through
an exclusive e-tickets service available in this website.

http://www.boomfestival.org/boom2008/news.php

What's a wife worth? update and upgrade with Joanna & Craig Barnes

new interview    

May 02, 2008 – Craig Barnes(51 minutes – 23.7mb)Craig Barnes  is an author, essayist, playwright and international mediator.  

 

 His books include  In Search Of The Lost Feminine, Decoding the Myths that Radically Reshaped Civilization, an analysis of the roles of women as they appear in archeology and myth before the patriarchy.

 

http://www.futureprimitive.org/GAIAlogues.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 See  Ivan Illich's  Shadow Work for  earlier take on all the work being done for little pay or cash  

LSD wrap-up after Hofmann de-animates by John Walsh and bad brains and bad trops

by John Walsh

"Bicycle Day", 19 April, was later commemorated by acid enthusiasts because it was the first conscious "trip" and it had had – just about – a happy ending. But the doors to perception are, for some truth-seekers, booby-trapped and dangerous. When LSD was co-opted by medical staff for recreational use, two decades after Hoffman's bike ride, users learnt the hard way how impossible it was to control the wild ride once it had started.

At Oxford in the early 1970s, we were frankly intimidated by the drug's reputation. We all wanted to try it, but were too chicken. The word in the quad was: if you had any secret hang-ups, mental instabilities, phobias, sexual inadequacies or social insecurities (the kind that surface in dreams,) you were wise of steer clear of acid. We knew when one of us was going to try it. "Tonight," I'd hear during dinner in hall, "Roger's tripping for the first time. But he'll have Will and Ollie with him, so he'll be OK."

I've always remembered Roger's first trip (so, I'll bet, has he). We all knew he'd be fine because he was so perfect: cool, handsome, easy-going, a hit with the girls, a dead ringer, with his corkscrewy curls, for Marc Bolan of T. Rex. And he was rich; he owned a Morgan, which he casually parked in the back quad. We knew Roger would survive the experience and bang on about it, like he banged on about his Bang and Olufsen state-of-the-art hi-fi.http://tinyurl.com/4kc8fl    

JLL writes on Tantra over at metahistory

JLL

Full-body Kundalini

I will begin by saying that I consider the Tantra of my predilection to be integral with Gaian shamanism. This is the telestic shamanism of the Mysteries, aimed at direct communication with Gaia, whose body is the planet earth. Gaia-Sophia, to give her full name, is the matrix of supersensory emotive intelligence that animates the natural world and all its creatures, including human beings.  http://www.metahistory.org/TantraTenderness1.php      plenty more images herehttp://www.shunya.net/Pictures/NorthIndia/Khajuraho/Khajuraho.htm  

Xenolinguist reports from Basel on mind-manifesting developments

okIt was massive. It was beautifully organized. The shift to a psychedelically informed culture is well underway. 1900-plus people, from 37 countries attended the four day event, according to Dieter Hagenbach, of  gaiamedia, organizers of the event. A big bookstore. A room dedicated to video presentations–art and documentary.http://mazerunner.wordpress.com/    

Alien Downloads

Altered states of consciousness are portals to multiple worlds. Many of these worlds are populated by sentient entities: gods; demons; plant teachers and animal spirits; Terence McKenna's machine elves. What forms of language are being used to communicate in these "Antipodes of the Mind?" Is language itself evolving in the psychedelic sphere? The Sundance Kid kept asking, "Who are those guys anyway?" The Xenolinguist wants to know what 'they' are trying to tell us.    

Daniel Kahneman – A Bat and a Ball Cost $1.10

Daniel Kahneman[Update 9/8/2010 A paper Danny co-authored, "Income's Influence on Happiness" has just been released.]

… the bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? Daniel Kahneman KNOWS that the first thought that entered your head was $.10–even if you're a Computer Science major at MIT. But that's the wrong answer.

Daniel Gilbert's "Stumbling On Happiness" led me to Nicholas Taleb's "Fooled By Randomness". Both books cite the work of Danny Kahneman. I blogged a bit about him here. I have been rummaging around the internet looking for whatever I can find on Danny and his work and have come up with some excellent content. But let me give you a taste of the sort of fascinating facts you'll hear in Danny's lectures first.

In a study Danny (I don't know him personally but after listening to all these lectures, I feel as though I do. He could no doubt name the cognitive bias this suggests) mentions in one of his talks, people are asked how much pleasure they derive from their car. They are then asked enough questions about the car to determine its blue book (resale) value. It turns out that there IS a correlation between the amount of pleasure the subject reported and the dollar value of the car. i.e. Yes, that late model BMW in the garage DOES give you more pleasure than my 20 year old Honda would. BUT! They then go on to ask the subject if they find their commute to work pleasurable, and guess what?– nobody does!. It turns out that the ONLY time people derive pleasure from their car is when they are THINKING about it.

From Wikipedia:
With Amos Tversky (Kahneman's longtime research partner, with whom he would have shared the Nobel prize had Tversky not died in 1996) and others, Kahneman established a cognitive basis for common human errors using heuristics and biases (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973, Kahneman, Slovic & Tversky, 1982), and developed Prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). He was awarded the 2002 the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in Prospect theory.

Major Contributions:

  • anchoring and adjustment -describes the common human tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor," on one trait or piece of information when making decisions.
  • availability heuristic -where people base their prediction of the frequency of an event or the proportion within a population based on how easily an example can be brought to mind.
  • conjunction fallacy -when it is assumed that specific conditions are more probable than a general condition that contains the specific condition. (i.e. You think you're MORE likely to die in an air disaster brought on by a terrorist event, than you are to die in ANY kind of air disaster).
  • framing (economics) -reversals of preference when the same problem is presented in different ways. (10% fat vs. 90% fat-free!)
  • loss aversion -the tendency for people strongly to prefer avoiding losses than acquiring gains. (Why New Yorkers stay in New York for the culture, and Angelenos stay in LA for the weather!!).
  • peak-end rule – we judge our past experiences almost entirely on how they were at their peak (pleasant or unpleasant) and how they ended.
  • prospect theory -how people make choices in situations where they have to decide between alternatives that involve risk.
  • reference class forecasting -predicts the outcome of a planned action based on actual outcomes in a reference class of similar actions.
  • simulation heuristic – people determine the likelihood of an event based on how easy it is to picture mentally. (Why we buy lottery tickets.)
  • status quo bias -in other words, people like things to stay relatively the same.

Media – Most of these lectures have a fairly long-winded intro. Skip ahead if you don't need the background info.

Explorations of the Mind – Well-Being: Living and Thinking About It Real Player Version.
(Actually worked better on Ye Olde Mac with a slower DSL connection).

The Wonders and the Flaws of Intuitive Thinking. (Real Player) Princeton Assembly for the Class of 2008.

Conversation With History – Intuition and Rationality (Real Player)

Download Conversation With History – Intuition and Rationality mp3.

Download "Explorations of the Mind – Intuition: The Marvels and the Flaws" mp3.

"Explorations of the Mind – Intuition: The Marvels and the Flaws" (Real Player)

Psychology and Behavioral Economics (Real Player)

Nobel Prize Lecture (Windows Media or Real Player)

Update March 2009- Kahneman and Taleb on the same stage discus the crash.

Update April 2009- Excellent Kahneman article at Haaretz.com.

Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory

Update March 2010. From the February 2010 Ted talks.

Found a few more DK links.
A Perspective on Judgment and Choice 24pg. PDF doc. on the subject of his Nobel Prize.
The Allais Paradox Wired magazine 10/10

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