If you’re looking for it, it’s here now.

http://www.pittsburghalphatoomega.com

IAS Freedom Medal of Valor winner Tom Cruise lays it out in this internal Church of Scientology video.  “Ya better know it!  And if ya don’t…”

The Mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the firehouse. The dim light of one in the morning, the moonlight from the open sky framed through the great window, touched here and there on the brass and the copper and the steel of the faintly trembling beast. Light flickered on bits of ruby glass and on sensitive capillary hairs in the nylon-brushed nostrils of the creature that quivered gently, gently, its eight legs spidered under it on rubber-padded paws.

***

Nights when things got dull, which was every night, the men slid down the brass poles, and set the ticking combinations of the olfactory system of the Hound and let loose rats in the firehouse areaway, and sometimes chickens, and sometimes cats that would have to be drowned anyway, and there would be betting to see which of the cats or chickens or rats the Hound would seize first. The animals were turned loose. Three seconds later the game was done, the rat, cat, or chicken caught half across the areaway, gripped in gentling paws while a four-inch hollow steel needle plunged down from the proboscis of the Hound to inject massive jolts of morphine or procaine. The pawn was then tossed in the incinerator. A new game began.

***

“I was just figuring,” said Montag, “what does the Hound think about down there nights? Is it coming alive on us, really? It makes me cold.”

“It doesn’t think anything we don’t want it to think.”

“That’s sad,” said Montag, quietly, “because all we put into it is hunting and finding and killing. What a shame if that’s all it can ever know.”

Beatty snorted, gently. “Hell! It’s a fine bit of craftsmanship, a good rifle that can fetch its own target and guarantees the bull’s-eye every time.”

“That’s why,” said Montag, “I wouldn’t want to be its next victim.”

-Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Literate? Watch out for this thing!

Beta test footage

“The thing’s hollow — it goes on forever — and — oh my God! — it’s full of stars!“

When my pal and collaborator split for Nepal a few weeks ago, he gave me a printout of Victor and Victoria Trimondi’s incredible book. The full text, translated from German, is available on the Trimondis’ site, which I’ve also added to the blogroll.

Politicians, journalists, artists, theologians — no one who deals with the Dalai Lama and his religion will be able to ignore the facts and arguments in this sensational yet sound study. It is a standard critique of Tibetan Buddhism. The subject areas encompassed by V. and V. Trimondi’s book, which also reveal potential target audiences, include the history of culture and religion, cross-cultural comparison, comparative religious studies, philosophy, political theory, international politics, state theory, interreligious dialogue, the sociology of religion, Buddhism, fascism, anarchism, ecological studies, feminism, gender studies, postmodernism, ethics, occultism, esotericism , mysticism, ritualism, mythology, magic, Oriental studies, history, anthropology, psychology, sexual theory, and consciousness studies.

Enjoy!

We’d rather be poisoners

Than prisoners

Like you

Momus

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – All U.S. children aged from six months up to 18 should be immunized every year against influenza, a panel of federal vaccine advisers said on Wednesday.

And yet,

Government Concedes Vaccine-Autism Case in Federal Court – Now What?

In sum, DVIC has concluded that the facts of this case meet the statutory criteria for demonstrating that the vaccinations CHILD received on July 19, 2000, significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder, which predisposed her to deficits in cellular energy metabolism, and manifested as a regressive encephalopathy with features of autism spectrum disorder. Therefore, respondent recommends that compensation be awarded to petitioners in accordance with 42 U.S.C. § 300aa-11(c)(1)(C)(ii).

FULL TEXT: AUTISM VACCINE CASE

Con suerte, this is a tipping point.

Be well.

Undignified Deaths

…

A 46-year-old construction worker fell to his death in November in Custer County, S.D., after co-workers had raised him, in a boom, 30 to 40 feet off the ground so that he could try to get cell-phone reception, but the boom’s truck tipped over backward. [Rapid City Journal, 11-13-07]

~News of the Weird, 12-30-07

Doesn’t any cell-phone related death qualify as undignified?