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Hell's Bibliophiles

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recovered documents from secret initiations into

Hell's Bibliophiles

Hell's Bibliophiles were first publicly exposed in the Dec-Jan 1995-1996 New Yorker where they were captured at one of their gatherings by investigative cartoonist Micheal Maslin.

our motto: Live to Read;
Read to Live.

categorization is otious and here they are:

[ the sociology of knowledge ] [ poverty ] [ riots ] [ prison ] [ law enforcement ] [ intelligence agencies ] [ conspiracies ] [ mind control ] [ insanity ] [ science and math ] [ nanotechnology ] [ retro-futurism ] [ sustainability ] [ ecology books ] [ social critics ] [ far out futures ] [ books about books ]

If you hated this page then you will also hate:
[ Dr Pseudocryptonym's Book Knowledge ]
[ California School Book Depository ]
[ Hell's Bibliophiles ]
[ Life of Vernon aka David Koresh ]

the sociology of knowledge ; reality tunnels ; "memetics" vaguely

The Social Construction of Reality, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, one of the Fifty 20th-Century Books Most Cited in Arts and Humanities Citation Index, 1976-1983. For instance, in the Loompanics catalog ("the lunatic fringe of the libertarian movement"). This is the book which informs this section the most. (not to be confused with The Construction of Social Reality by our local philosopher-of-mind, Berkeley professor, free speech and anti-rent-control activist John R. Searle). Required reading for initiation into Hell's Bibliophiles.

We don't recruit 'em. We recognize 'em.
--Sonny Barger

Ideology and Utopia, Karl Mannheim, 1929 in German 1936 in English; listed in Harvard Guide to Influential Books. From the back cover: "Unlike other sociological-historical studies of recent years, this book is not concerned with the decline or the death of western civilization but rather with its manner of survival. Here is an analysis of the fictions (the "ideologies") that are used to stabilize a social order, and of the wish-dreams (the "utopias") that are employed when any transformation of that same order is attempted. Here, in short, is a penetrating study of the myths by which society lives and evolves." In college I had an assignment to read the last chapter. It took me 20 years to finish the assignment.

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
--Friedrich Nietzsche

The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society Kenneth E. Boulding, 1956

Please do not confuse The Image with the Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America, 1961, Daniel J. Boorstin, American dissident and Librarian of Congress.

"The making of illusions which flood our experience has become the business of America."
-- Daniel J. Boorstin

Robert Anton Wilson. I think it was Prometheus Rising, or was it The Illuminati Papers or maybe it was just Coincidance, where he goes on and on about "reality tunnels." Wilson quotes Berger and Luckmann. Also see The New Inquisition

"Model Agnosticism vs. A New Idolatry: A Critique of Robert Anton Wilson's The New Inquisition "It seems to me that existence -- at this point I have doubts about 'the' 'universe' -- is a lot like a Rorschach ink-blot. Everybody looks at it and sees their own favorite reality-tunnel."1 Robert Anton Wilson's book, The New Inquisition, addresses the issue of these belief systems. He feels that modern science, at least "the establishment" of modern science, is blinded by it's own reality tunnel. But is he right?" By K Buxton.

Robert Sheaffer's review, "Guerrilla Ontology and Factoids in Action" of The New Inquisition in The Skeptical Inquirer vol 14 fall 1989:

"Wilson has clearly stumbled on the little-known twentieth-century shortcut for being proclaimed a genius: Drink deeply from the fountain of Nietzsche, and spew back some portion of it, in a form vastly easier to understand. Among the others making this discovery were Sigmund Freud, H. L. Mencken, Ortega y Gassett, Eric Hoffer, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Ayn Rand."

Perhaps we can add wanna-bes: Edgar Z. Friedenberg ("ressentiment"); John Lilly ("In the province of the mind, what is believed to be true is true or becomes true, within limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind, there are no limits."); various sociologists-of-knowledge. I see that Robert Sheaffer himself has written a book Resentment Against Achievement. Quote:

another review of TNI, this by Jim Lippard

Here's a snippet from Prometheus Rising:
"... let us be reminded that Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake February 18, 1600, for teaching that the earth moves. Was he guilty or not?"

John Lilly Simulations of God, takes on the ideas of reality tunnels and alternate ontologies head-on. See also his other books, e.g. Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer; Center of the Cyclone; highly provocative, but promise hasn't panned out over the decades.

Oh, by the way, how are you going to decide what to believe and what is real, and what the mind is, where the very instrument of searching for this answer, and the criteria for judging correctness, is part of the question itself?

Publish and perish.
--Giordano Bruno, as quoted by Ramamurti Shankar, in Quantum Mechanics

poverty

• How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York by Jacob A. Riis. 1890. Danish immigrant with a camera, documents the immigrant neighborhoods of New York City. Lead to many changes, and building codes. (But see also The Death of Common Sense) The first edition couldn't accommodate the photos he took so they were reproduced as drawings from photos. (In 1972 Dover Books came out with an edition with the original photos, many of them now well known.) Suffers slightly from ethnic generalizations and a too-simple analysis, and was probably used as propaganda for Prohibition; still a searing human document. Insights of what third world cities may be going through now in generating an urban infrastructure. Manhattan has a few housing projects named after Riis.

  LONG ago it was said that "one half of the world does not know how the other half lives." That was true then. It did not know because it did not care. The half that was on top cared little for the struggles, and less for the fate of those who were underneath, so long as it was able to hold them there and keep its own seat. There came a time when the discomfort and crowding below were so great, and the consequent upheavals so violent, that it was no longer an easy thing to do, and then the upper half fell to inquiring what was the matter.

• Let Us Now Praise Famous Men; An Account of Three Tenant Farm Families in the US south in 1936. 6 dozen photographs by Walker Evans; text by James Agee. Sort of a sequel of the above. An incredible mind-blowing book. Fascinating. Heartrending. A book groping, strugling to put itself together. More than reportage; a "late-night written" cry of anguish. A literary experiment, maybe not always "sucessful". An early attempt at multimedia:

  If I could do it. I'd do no writing at all here. It would be photographs; the rest would be fragments of cloth, bits of cotton, lumps of earth, records of speech, pieces of wood and iron, phials of odors, plates of food and of excrement. Booksellers would consider it quite a novelty; critics would murmur, yes, but is it art; and I would trust a majority of you to use it as you would a parlor game.
  A piece of the body torn out by the roots might be more to the point.

  Stewart Brand called it "the opposite of fiction."
• The Other America, Michael Harrington. 1963. This is the book that is credited with launching the "War on Poverty" (sometimes called "the war on poor people") in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. ("War on Poverty"--bad metaphor; a "continuous-judicious-application -of-small-constructive-steps-to-help particular persons in particular situations" might have been a better overarching concept. It is not as if there is some enemy you are trying to win over; just ongoing processes of living and improvement. Neverendingly. Nothing different from what anyone else is trying to do.) Sort of a sequel of the above.
• American Pictures, Jacob Holdt. 1985. Another Danish traveler with a camera! Holdt never read Riis (although he grew up 15 miles and 100 years away from him) until he came upon his book in 1975 in this country. He was so impressed with the book, he stole it. (Probably the Dover edition.) A lone hitchhike-vagabondage across the US in the late 70's, documenting the lowest of the underclass, interspersed with encounters with rich and imfamous. Holdt says that the FBI in response commissioned a book that shows how great the USA is. What are they so worried about? If anyone wants to discredit Holdt, he provides everything needed in his own book. He took his 30,000 photos and made a multimedia slide show (I've seen it three times), which he distilled to this book which is a best seller in Europe. A rare document. Sort of a sequel of the above. Absolutely recommended.
• The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare Michael B. Katz. 1989. a history of US poverty programs. Dedication: "For Michael Harrrington 1928-1989".
• Inner City Poverty in the United States, Laurence E. Lynn, Jr., and Michael G.H. McGeary, Editors, National Academy Press, Washington DC, 1990. Sort of a sequel of the above. Books with titles like "Inner City Poverty in the United States" ye shall have with ye always.
• 54 Ways You Can Help the Homeless by Charles Kroloff; A piece of the body torn out by the roots might be more to the point.
  On the other hand, application of small, personally applied steps in individual cases might be more to the point.
• Confessions of an English Opium Eater DeQuincy. 1822. Wandering around London mostly hungry, squating in abandoned buildings, justifying himself as unemployed scholar, befriending homeless street kids and, having his incredible daydreams and reveries. Someone else has said: "The dream is not in the drug but in the dreamer."
  N.b.: DeQuincy never broke the junk habit, although he sort of implies he did at the end of the book. DeQuincy did not use illegal drugs. This book was available on the web with a lot of other drug literature, but it seems that all trace of that site has been wiped off the face of the web.
• In Darkest England, and The Way Out, General William Booth, 1890, "The founder of the Salvation Army tells of his philosophy, motivation, and plans for the future. Set against various tales of destitution in Victorian England." Great title.
• Major Barbara; George Berhard Shaw play; with essay on poverty and arms dealers. London. 1905.
• The People of the Abyss by Jack London, (with photos)

  THE EXPERIENCES RELATED in this volume fell to me in the summer of 1902. I went down into the under-world of London with an attitude of mind which I may best liken to that of the explorer. I was open to be convinced by the evidence of my eyes, rather than by the teachings of those who had not seen, or by the words of those who had seen and gone before. Further, I took with me certain simple criteria with which to measure the life of the under-world. That which made for more life, for physical and spiritual health, was good; that which made for less life, which hurt, and dwarfed, and distorted life, was bad.

• Down and Out in London and Paris, George Orwell [pseudonym]
• A Poison Stronger Than Love; The Destruction of an Ojibwa Community, Anastasia M. Shkilnyk, 1985. Sociological account, but much more than that. Bureaucracy. If anyone wanted an example of destruction by government welfare....
• Five Families; Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty, Oscar Lewis, 1959; unread so far; just something I found while dumpster-diving. [---defunct link ./fivefamiliesexcerpt.html] Excerpt.
• Child of the Dark: The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus. 1963. Sao Paulo favela dweller, two years of school.
• Land Without Bread, (Las Hurdes) documentary film, Luis Bunuel. 1932. This film made him persona non grata to the Spanish government.
• [---defunct link ./Swift_AModestProposal.html] A Modest Proposal Everyone must read this classic.
• Another proposal: welfare reform
• The 400 least impoverished Americans, (at least as far as money is concerned), according to capitalist tool Forbes magazine. Why is it that at the end of every list it's always black females??

Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War on Poverty, Daniel P. Moynihan, 1970.

.... this danger has been compounded by the increasing introduction into polictics and government of ideas originating in the social sciences which promise to bring about social change through the manipulation of what might be termed the hidden processes of society. That is to say, the manipulation of those systemic relations between one set of activities and another which are not normally percieved by the participants as being related, but which on closer examination are seen to be. The discovery and analysis of such relationships is the very essence of the social sciences. Yet it remains an occult art. And a highly uncertain one. Not long ago it could be agreed that politics was the business of who gets what, when, where, how. It is now more than that. It has become a process that also deliberately seeks to effect such outcomes as who thinks what, who acts when, who lives where, who feels how. That this description no more than defines a totalitarian sociey is obvious enough. But it has come to characterize democratic government as well. p. lv

cf

"The making of illusions which flood our experience has become the business of America."
-- Daniel J. Boorstin

I was wandering around Telegraph Avenue a few hours ago where I saw a street vendor of bumperstickers who was, for whatever reason, giving away his stock for free. I asked him to pick one out at random as sort of Fortune Cookie kind of synchronicity experiment. He gave me one that says "PRIVATE POVERTY" and something else less interesting that I do not repeat lest I cause a copyright violation.

I got to thinking that that was of interesting idea, Poverty is public. Or is wealth private, cause it ws only created by the owner. Or not?

I actually don't see anything wrong with wealth and competition per se and thus there has to be RELATIVE losers but the danger is that society will become so polarized that nothing works anymore. A problem of scale. If Mr. Gates is worth $100 billion, does that mean that he really works 100 x harder than an ordinary billionaire? [excuse first draft in progress....]

NEWS ITEM: "A study by Columbia University's National Center for Children in Poverty says that some 6.1 million American children under the age of six lived in poverty in 1994." Dec 11 1996. Luckily poverty depresses labor rates and doesn't cost anything.

riots

Rivers of Blood, Years of Darkness, Robert Conot, 1967. I prefer this to the following:

Burn, Baby, Burn. The Watts Riot, Jerry Cohen and William S. Murphy, 1966

Violence in the City; An end or a beginning?: A REPORT BY THE GOVERNOR'S COMMISSION ON THE LOS ANGELES RIOTS. published Dec 2, 1965; now, March 13, 1998, [---defunct link ./aboutViolenceInTheCity.html] on the web in full.

As a Commission, we are seriously concerned that the existing breach, if allowed to persist, could in time split our society irretrivably. So serious and so explosive is the situation that, unless it is checked, the August riots may seem by comparison to be only a curtain-raiser for what could blow up one day in the future.

Excellent fear mongering.

Prevention and Control of Mobs and Riots FBI manual:

The exercise of violence during a riot does not result in a purification of the atmosphere, leading to peace. It is not a situation in which excess energy is worked off, leaving the decks cleared for cooperation. Deep scars are left on both sides through this failure of law enforcement to control people. The rioters, especially the more active ones, take pride in their accomplishments regardless of the outcome of the riot. They do not feel guilty and tend to justify their actions on the basis of 'moral reasons.' One of the immediate consequences of a riot is a stimulation of determination to prepare for the 'next time.' Far from eliminating the differences which caused the violence in the first place, they are consolidated, reinforced and deepened...."

Speak for yourself.

prison

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler, well-known novel, Soviet prison in the 1930's, Moscow trials, Stalin era. Made Koestler persona non grata to the Stalinistas. Or was it Franco's prison, for being a premature antifacist. See The Invisible Writing, autobiography. Describes what amounts to a mystical experience in prison, according to Walter Stace, The Teachings of the Mystics. Koestler, a believer in life after death, commited double suicide with his wife.

After a more of less steady physical decline over the last years, the process has now reached an acute state with added complications which make it advisable to seek self-deliverance now, before I become incapable of making the necessary arrangements.
I wish my friends to know that I am leaving their company in a peaceful frame of mind, with some timid hopes for a depersonalised after-life beyond due confines of space, time and matter and beyond the limits of our comprehension. This "oceanic feeling" has often sustained me at difficult moments, and does so now, while I am writing this.

When the tape of Clinton being questioned for the Grand Jury was broadcast, (something to do with a blue dress, Sept. 1998) during the tape changing break, a commentator, I forget who, said something like Clinton said he felt persecuted like a character in a novel and George Stephanopolous, on the show, said "Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon."

In the Belly of the Beast Abbot. In his corespondence to Norman Mailer, he convinced Mailer that he was "redeemed by writing". On parole, he knifed a waiter, over a misunderstanding. Mailer had no comment. Abbott was sued and lost. Royalties go to the victim's family.

Of Crimes and Punishments, Cesare Bonesana, Marchese Beccaria, 1738-1794, Originally published in Italian in 1764.

"Urgent Call to Action! Respond to the Unjust Execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and Compatriots in Nigeria! The government of General Sani Abacha has crossed a final and irrevocable line..." . dead link

www.calyx.com/~refuse/mumia/ and http://www.wnia.org/WNIA/hap/mumia.html about irregularly charged and convicted journalist now on death row. FLASH! now disclosed, he has health problems; retrial rebuffed so far. dead link

A true nightmare that could happen to anyone. a personal prison saga, kfl link recently fixed, Nov '00.

"American Gulag" Nov. 00.
"The figures are startling. In the last year of the Carter administration (1979), our nations federal prisons held about 20,000 inmates. By contrast, as the Clinton administration draws to a close we will have 135,000 inmates in federal prisons; .... In 1979, there were 268,000 inmates in the prisons of all 50 states. Today, they hold almost 1.3 million. In 1979, there were 150,000 in local jails and lockups. Today, local jail facilities hold nearly 700,000. This year, we will exceed 2 million inmates in our prisons and jails. As we enter the millennium, the nation has about 6.5 million of its citizens under some form of correctional supervision.
"And a new twist has been added: the supermax prison composed exclusively of cells used for solitary confinement."
"choose life", by By Sister Helen Prejean Nov. 00.

A Guided Tour of the Gulag or some such title. (Soviet.) ~1980. Is anyone coming out with a U.S. edition?

"New Mexico's privately operated prisons are filled with America's impoverished, violent outcasts - and those are the guards...."

The World Factbook of Criminal Justice Systems US Do"J"

An Eye for an Eye: Four inmates reveal the crime of American prisons today. Griswold, Misenheimer, Powers, and Tromanhauser. 1970.

The Prison-Industrial Complex

"When They Get Out"

The Wall. Meet some convicts, and read their cases.

meet some more convicts. more. more. more. more.

The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison. Gresham M. Sykes, 1958, Princeton U Press; more popular everyday; prison as more profitable replacement for education.

Physicians for Human Rightsresearch and investigations

"In the Penal Colony", where you may have the name of YOUR CRIME carved on your back.

Konzentrationslager
Lego Concentration Camp Kit
http://users.erols.com/kennrice/lego-kz3.jpg. see article about Zbigniew Libera For more on Zyklon, see below.

The Star Rover, Jack London. His least popular novel; based on the real-life San Quentin prison experiences of convict Ed Morrel. Probably doesn't pass the high school English class blandness test. Mental escape from torture (binding in the "jacket") by internal generation of what are today called "virtual realities". This has superficial resemblance to a divination technique of (the old) Ojibwa people of Canada.

Ed Morrel The 25th Man 1924. account of his prison experiences. Looking for a copy. I learned of this person from publications of Sutphen, reincarnationist seminarist, who believes he is a reincarnation of Morrel.

http://dallasnews.com/texas_southwest/61114_CANDYBAR07.html
"16-year term for candy bar theft spurs disbelief"
2000/04/07

Texas' reputation as a law-and-order state is receiving worldwide attention after a Tyler jury sentenced a man to 16 years in prison for shoplifting a $1 candy bar.

Calls from around the world have flooded the Smith County district attorney's office and the state district court after Kenneth Payne, 29, was sentenced to hard time for the theft of a Snickers from a Tyler grocery on Dec. 17.

"It was a king size," Smith County assistant district attorney Jodi Brown said after the jury returned its sentencing recommendation, The Associated Press reported.

... "Mr. Mauer said it will cost taxpayers more than $200,000 to incarcerate Mr. Payne if he serves his full sentence."

other literary slaves, convicts, prisoners:

• Aesop -- slave
• Epictetus -- slave
• O. Henry -- convict
• Wilhelm Reich -- died in prison; in for selling illegal 'quack' medical devices (Orgone box), awaiting trial; books seized and destroyed by US Federal Government.
• Woody Allen -- descendant of slaves twice over: Slav and Jew
• some US slaves, biographies
• George Thompson, Prison life and reflections; or, A narrative of the arrest, trial, conviction, imprisonment, treatment, observations, reflections, and deliverance of Work, Burr, and Thompson, who suffered an unjust and cruel imprisonment in Missouri penitentiary, for attempting to aid some slaves to liberty ..., 1850.
• Charles Colson, Loving God -- convict
• Richard M. Nixon, Six Crises -- unindicted co-conspirator
• Gerald Ford -- pardoned Nixon; a prisoner of the narrow confines of his own mind ; his most creative work is The Warren Commission Report on the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. Please do not confuse John Kennedy, tool, with John Kennedy Toole, author of A Confederacy of Dunces, Pulitzer Prize for fiction, 1981; suicide 1969.
• Rev. Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured for Christ -- Rumanian prisoner; also wrote Marx and Satan; he comes by his opinions honestly. Sermon of Rev. Estus Pirkle appears as part of this book (p 40) , and used for lyrics to an intentionally provocative Negativeland song, rumored to be the trigger for a murder. See their CD "Helter Stupid" for an account of the media pseudophenzy. Wurmbrand spent 2 years in solitary.
• Dostoyevsky
  made to believe he was to be shot; it was all a joke. The House of the Dead Tsarist prison.
• Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
  "For years I have with reluctant heart withheld from publication this already completed book: my obligation to those still living outweighed by obligation to the dead. But now that State Security has seized the book anyway, I have no alternative but to publish it immediately." (The Gulag Archipelego)
• as far as I know, all Russian writers
• Socrates -- the greatest philosopher of his time, was requested to drink poison by dimmer bulbs of his time. The charge was [defunct link corruption.html] corrupting Youth" by talking to them; also, according to I.F. Stone, for expressing skepticism about democracy as a form of government. They had a vote on the issue and it came out that way, so it was only fair. Greek democracy is the basis of all western governments. Socrates never wrote anything that has come to us.
• Kurt Vonnegut Jr, Jean Paul Sartre -- POWs, same war, same side
• Agehananda Bharati (Leopold Fischer) -- POW, same war, other side
  also had a mystical experience in prison.
• Bertrand Russell -- British prisoner, (illegally opposing world war one [Hitler changed his views on pacifism]) and Nobel Prizee. While he was being booked into prison he was asked which religion was his, to which he said "Agnostic." His goaler remarked he had never heard of that church, but "at least we all worship the same God." Russell later said this remark sustained him greatly during his stay in prison.
• Robert Malecki, Ha Ha McNamara Vietnam, My Bellybutton is My Crystal Ball Malecki remains in exile in Sweden. This book was writen in response to McNamara's recent book saying the Vietnam-USA war was a mistake. McNamara does not belong in this list; he has never been convicted. Some difficulty connecting to this website reliably. to get the book, try here.
• Guy Colwell, artist of "urban Realism", collected work in book Central Body. Rip Off Press, Auburn, California, 1991. Decided to go to prison, instead of Vietnam. Part autobiography, part showcase of art, shows how things affected his thoughts and feelings and contents of his art. Certain sections may not be suitable for Tipper Gore.
• Leonard Peltier. Prison Writing: My Life is my Sun Dance. current US Prisoner #89637-132
• Henry David Thoreau, author of "Civil Disobediance", in prison was asked by visiting Emerson: "What are you doing in there?", to which he replied, "What are you doing out there?"

Letters to candidate George W. Bush:
http://www.gwbush.com/powdonald.htm
http://www.gwbush.com/powkevin.htm
http://www.gwbush.com/powjoe.htm
http://www.gwbush.com/powmelvin.htm
http://www.gwbush.com/powrpozo.htm
http://www.gwbush.com/powtom.htm

November Coalition. Prisoners of the drug Wars

"Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book and Addison-Wesley was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in initial capital letters (e.g., Plexiglas)."
copyright page p iv. Live from death row, Mumia Abu-Jamal, 1995.

A nightmare that could happen to anyone:

I am a Fugative from a Chain Gang. film. Director Mervyn Le Roy
"...expressing the very nadir of human hopes and aspirations", made in the worst year of the Depression, 1933. Has the most ironic last line in movie history, before or since.

One of the nine best films of all time, according to Luis Bunuel in 1952.

cf.

It's a Wonderful Life film
With entities Capra, Stewart (recently ascended), Clarence, Zuzu.

Two men who wanted to become civil engineers; one did, one didn't.

If you have seen either of these two films, I recommend that you see the other. Woody Allen makes a cinematic quotation from Chain Gang in one of his films ( I forget which; was it Take the Money and Run?).

law enforcement

www.apbnews.com prison, cops, laws, video

www.apbnews.com/cjsystem/behind_bars/1999/12/09/japan/index.html "Obedience to Authority Japanese Prison System Is Fundamentally Different From U.S. "

Illustrated Diary Inside of Fuchu Prison , v 1 and 2 By Hiroshi Nonaka Publisher: Nippon Hyoron Sha . Some pictures: bathing room. -- Boxlike rooms. -- exercise yard. note the resemblance to Owen's 'Panopticon'. -- restraining a prisoner. -- chobatsu. -- in restriants. --

Cybrary Index of Links; bag of links

www.open.gov.uk/police/mps/mps/mis/laylink.htm worldwide police agencies
www.web-police.org/
www.policefuturists.org/sources.html
police abuse
www.ncjrs.org/homepage.htm National Criminal Justice Information Center
--- Missing image bill-gates.jpg ---

from Wired News 'Gates Donates Millions to Schools' by Katie Dean, Nov. 11, 2000

On Tuesday, the Microsoft billionaire's philanthropic organization will announce million-dollar grants to schools in five areas of California.

According to the Oakland Tribune, Oakland is one of the lucky cities. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will donate $15 million to be administered through the Bay Area Coalition of Essential Schools, which has helped develop smaller schools in Oakland.

The funds will be used to continue the development of smaller schools. The Oakland Unified School District plans to open several small schools next year, the newspaper reported. ....

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed $75 million to schools in Washington this year, and $56 million to other schools around the country.

It grants 60 percent of its funds to global health programs, and the remaining 40 percent is split between education, libraries and Pacific Northwest nonprofit organizations.

www.fbi.gov/mostwant/fugitive/septclark.htm. Wanted by the FBI, Chester Ledzepplin Clark. Bank Robbery... "committed by the "The Happy Face Bandits" in Los Angeles, California. .... The robbers approached victim tellers and presented threatening demand notes with happy face drawings on them."

Please do not confuse Chester Ledzepplin Clark, with Rocky Racoon Clark, accused of slipping through the turnsile on BART (subway) and with being a multimillionaire.

http://www.fbi.gov/nipc/zyklon.htm "Teen Indicted as Lovesick Hacker Attempt to Impress Classmate Got Authorities' Attention Instead".
"'Crystal, I love you.' They are the words of an infatuated teenage computer hacker who signed himself 'Zyklon.' But instead of writing his feelings on a card and dropping it in the locker of his high school crush, he scrawled it repeatedly across the many pages of seemingly impenetrable Web sites. ... If convicted, Burns, 19, could be sentenced to 15 years in prison." If annual incarceration costs $30,000 (about the same as Stanford), this comes to $450,000. Better that taxpayers' money go to this than educating their own children. When he gets out he will know more about the criminal world, and maybe he won't do it again. Plus he can work for 23 cents an hour while there generating high profits for his employer, undercut local labor (in many cases criminals who supplant and finance their career with legitimate earnings) , with a cut for the law enforcement system. So you can see there is a lot of wisdom behind the system.

Love makes fools of us all.

Crystal, I love you, whoever you are.

oicj.acsp.uic.edu/spearmint/public/books/index.cfm some books and sample chapters
oicj.acsp.uic.edu/spearmint/public/books/xtremist.cfm Extremist groups. See if your church is listed.

Samuel Johnson on the Death Penalty.> Rambler 114, Saturday, 20 April 1751. Public domain in most countries.

Federal Emergency Management Agency for kids, www.fema.gov/kids/little.htm
What is a tsunami?
-A series of waves that follow an underground disturbance
-A kind of raw tuna
-A type of Asian self defense
-A disaster involving tainted sushi
When you are told to evacuate, what should you do with your pet?
-Take it with you
-Leave it at home
When martial law comes, will it come as a declared emergency, or as a slow erosion?
FYI. From the FEMA_Viewer Privacy and Security Notice

We collect and store only the following information about you: the name of the domain from which you access the Internet (for example, aol.com, if you are connecting from an America Online account, or psu.edu if you are connecting from Pennsylvania State University's domain); the date and time you access our site; and the Internet address of the website from which you linked directly to our site.

In short, if you click on a link from this page, this fact will be noted and recorded.

Bibliography of "An Appraisal of the Technologies of Political Control" Surveillance, Crowd Control, Riot Control, Prison Control, Interrogation, Torture. But what about urinalysis?

Quomodo Invidiosulus nomine Grinchus Christi Natalem Abrogaverit. Qui Lebellus est a Doctore Seuss. Guenevera Tunberg Conversus (iuvante Terentio Tunberg)

intelligence agencies

Looking for the [defunct link clandestineservice.html] ultimate overseas career? Due to recent perfidity within the Company and invasive lie-detector tests of female agents, there are opportunities NOW.

http://www.odci.gov/cia/ciakids/index.html. CIA's Homepage For Kids.

San Jose Mercury News, www.sjmercury.com/drugs/ articles by Gary Web on CIA allowed crack sales to LA gangs to finance Nicaraguan contras.

If the allegations raised in the San Jose Mercury News are true then those actions are tantamount to ''treason.''

--Maxine Waters, Member of Congress
in a letter to The Honorable Henry J. Hyde Chairman
Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives
http://www.sjmercury.com/drugs/library/35.htm

A list of CIA books..... Counterintelligence and Technical Security

Octopussy. James Bond flick, 1983, Roger Moore, United Artists. unseen by this reviewer; see Internet Movie Database for details.

Or maybe after reading the National Security Agency employee security manual you will see your dream job.

excerpt:

For Official Use Only
Separate from classified information is information or material marked "FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY" (such as this handbook). This designation is used to identify that official information or material which, although unclassified, is exempt from the requirement for public disclosure of information concerning government activities and which, for a significant reason, should not be given general circulation. Each holder of "FOR OFFICAL USE ONLY" (FOUO) information or material is authorized to disclose such information or material to persons in other departments or agencies of the Executive and Judicial branches when it is determined that the information or material is required to carry our a government function. The recipient must be advised that the information or material is not to be disclosed to the general public. Material which bears the "FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY" caveat does not come under the regulations governing the protection of classified information. The unauthorized disclosure of information marked "FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY" does not constitute an unauthorized disclosure of classified defense information. However, Department of Defense and NSA regulations prohibit the unauthorized disclosure of information designated "FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY." Appropriate administrative action will be taken to determine responsibility and to apply corrective and/or disciplinary measures in cases of unauthorized disclosure of information which bears the "FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY" caveat. Reasonable care must be exercised in limiting the dissemination of "FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY" information. While you may take this handbook home for further study, remember that is does contain "FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY" information which should be protected.

In accordance with this, please do not reveal to anyone the things you read at that web site (except OFFICIAL USE). In particular, do not show it to anyone in the Legislative branch. As a US Government publication that has been paid for with public money, it is public domain.

More tax dollars at work: Clinton just (Sep 96) signed the Military budget; $265 billion, a little higher ($11 billion) than requested. Last time I counted, there were about 266 million human inhabitants in the USA. Comes to about $1000 per inhabitant. I hope they aren't doing a little deficit spending...

Because unemployment is so low, 5%, the Fed (a nongovernment club of banks) is considering raising the interest rates to try to bring it back up. Gotta protect the economy. Inflation would be damaging. It is especially damaging to lenders, as contrasted with borrowers (deficit spenders). Since the federal government is the borrower, and the Fed is the lender, it important that the Fed be independent, lest the debt nationale be paid back with cheaper future dollars.

Secret Dress Codes of the NSA; an analysis of NSA employee manual

Have pity on the NSA employees. Their paradoxical task is to listen in on and study human communications, while making sure never to get to know too many humans.

There'll always be a career in Urinalysis.

From :http://www.nsa.gov/about_nsa/faqs_internet.html

"What organizations are included in the U.S. Intelligence Community? 
There are 13 federal organizations in the Intelligence Community. They are: 

            National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS); 
            Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); 
            National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA); 
            Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); 
            Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA); 
            National Reconnaissance Office (NRO); 
            Department of Energy (DoE); 
            Army Intelligence; 
            Air Force Intelligence; 
            Navy Intelligence; 
            Marine Corps Intelligence; 
            Department of Treasury; 
            Department of State."

NEWSFLASH! Furbys(TM) as threat to NSA, according to the BBC.

The Furby, a highly sought-after Christmas toy in 1998, is now a high-ranking public enemy and has been banned from National Security Agency premises in Maryland.

Anyone at the NSA coming across a Furby, or a crack team of Furbies infiltrating the building has been asked to "contact their Staff Security Office for guidance".

[defunct link authorsFBIstbdies.html] FBI reading list, according to "framed" convict and "Patriot in Exile", Michael Williams; a specimen of his state of mind. (I do NOT vouch for claims made here. Those with historical information either way, please email histeria@berkeleynetcentral.com. I trust the public figures mentioned can defend themselves.)

When J. Edgar Hoover read that Jean-Paul Sartre had become a communist and was writing left wing articles, he wrote a memo to his agents: "Find out who Sartre is."

An H.B. member reports, when s/he goes into the FBI office to be debriefed, they call her/him "doctor swaydocryptonym".

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed.
former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, former general. As quoted in Economics, Paul A. Samuelson, William D. Nordhaus. 13th Edition, 1989. New York: McGraw Hill.

conspiracies

a fun hobby; collect the complete set

How can we account for the present situation unless we believe that men high in the Government are concerting to deliver us to diaster? This must be the product of a great conspiracy, a conspiracy so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. What can be made of the unbroken series of decisions and acts contributing to the strategy of defeat? They cannot be attributed to incompetence. If [Secretary of State] Marshall were merely stupid, the laws of probability would dictate that part of his decisions would serve his country's interest.
--Senator McCarthy, the Senate, June 14, 1951.

None Dare Call It Conspiracy. Gary Allen with Larry Abraham, Rossmoor, California. Concord Press. 1971. Introduction by Congressman John G. Schmitz

None Dare Call It Conspiracy will be a very controversial book. At first it will receive little publicity and those whose plans are exposed in it will try to kill it by the silent treatment. For reasons that become obvious as you read this book, it will not be reviewd in all the "proper" places or be available on your local bookstand. However, there is nothing these people can do to stop a grass roots book distributing system. John G. Schmitz, US Congressman

FDR once said "In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way." ... If we were merely dealing with the law of averages, half of the events affecting our nation's well-being would be good for America. If we were dealing with mere incompetence, our leaders should occasionally make a mistake in our favor. We shall attempt to prove that we are not really dealing with coincidence or stupidity, but with planning and brilliance.... p8

(The essense of the conspiracy mentality. Only picks out in his own head the cases that support his preconceptions. Typically, it's also statistically naive. And note the same line about "incompetence" and "mere incompetence"; I think we have non-accidental conceptual continuity here...)

"...this subject certainly does lend itself to ridicule and satire." p10. No examples are given.

Carrol Quigley. Foreign Service School, Georgetown University. Tragedy and Hope 1300 pages, description of the conspiracy

Quigley: .."nothing less than to create a world system of finanical control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole." ...

Quigley: "... his [the individual's] freedom and choice will be controlled within vary narrow alternatives by the fact that he will be numbered from birth and followed, as a number, through his educational training, his required military or other public service, his tax contributions, his health and medical requirements, and his final retirement and death benefits."

endorsers on the back:
Ezra Taft Benson, Former Secretary of Agriculture
Dan Smoot, Former Assistant to J. Edgar Hoover
Norman Dodd, Chief Investigator. Reese Committe to Investiagate Foundations, "stopped from investigating insider connections" 1953
Dr. Medford Evans, Former Chief of Security for the Atom Bomb Project
Dr. Barney Finkel President, The Jewish Right
Dean Clarence E. Manion, Former Dean Notre Dame Law School

"It's not that 1984 isn't coming, it's just behind schedule."

http://a-albionic.com/

www.etext.org//Politics/Conspiracy/Misc/conspiracy.book.list

[defunct link BeastNet-biblio.txt] Help fight the Beast. (For some reason the BeastNet archive seems to be completely wiped off the net.)

"Readings on Corruption, Conspiracy, and Constitutional Principles, Compiled by Jon Roland" [defunct links /readlst1.htm and ./readlst2.htm] From www.constitution.org/cs_refer.htm

except from Robert Anton Wilson's new book, Everything is Under Control: The Encyclopedia of Conspiracy Theories. New book, but old story. Also a list of conspiracies from the book http://www.cruzio.com/~blackops/

The World Set Free. H. G. Wells. novel 1913.
Predicted vast amount of energy from the atom. Coined terms "atomic energy" and "atomic warfare". Discribed a world government. Read by Leo Szilard, discoverer of the possibility of nuclear chain reaction.

The Shape of Things to Come. H. G. Wells. novel 1933. another vision of world government.

The Open Conspiracy. H. G. Wells. tract. "... a public collusion of science-minded industrialists and financiers to establish a world republic. Thus to save the world." Also read by Szilard. -- quoted in p 14, Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, 1986.

The Aquarian Conspiracy. Marilyn Fergusson. 1979?
"New Age" grabbag. Not really a conspiracy, because no real communication between the particpants and no unity of thought, action, or goals, just a name for a cultural tendency. But for those who need to feed their ignorant paranoia, a suitable stimulus.

There's too much on the web proporting to be "information"; here's a sample anyway. UFOs, Aliens & Antichrist: The Angelic Conspiracy and End Times Deception. Just dump everything in a big pot, and boil it down.

From Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report. "An introduction to the most popular publications in the antigovernment movement"

The Keys of This Blood: The Struggle for World Dominion Betweeen Pope John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Capitalist West,
[One down, one to go.]
Malachi Martin. 1990. (a.k.a. Michael Serafian, also rumored to write under name Xavier Rynne). Ex-Jesuit, Vatican insider, some say "spy", novelist, and a very readable writer, with his special point of view. This book is rich. Fatima, and the prophecies. Gramsci, the most dangerous Communist author. Divine intervention. Nice layout of various conspiracy scenarios. Explication of clashing world views. See also his almost-excellent book on demonic poccession, Hostage to the Devil. True case histories.
(1999. Malachi Martin, R.I.P.)

Life of Vernon

Vernon Howell, aka David Koresh.

mind control

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. They are engines of change, windows on the world, lighthouses erected in a sea of time.
Barbara Tuchman, historian, quoted in Paul Samuelson, Economics, p ix.

Whad'da ya' expect her to say? She's a writer....

a bibliography of Scientology and mind control---- this site had been totally erased Dec 1996, maybe innocuously; it's back now, Jan 97 ....... more books re Scientology ..... yet more books re Scientology

The Life and Letters of Tofu Roshi, Susan Ichi Su Moon, 1988. Foreword by Gahan Wilson.

1984 Revisited: Totalitarianism in our century. Irving Howe, ed. 1983.

Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley, 1958. Over-population, Over-Organization, Propaganda, The Arts of Selling, Brainwashing, Chemical Persuasion, Subconscious Persuasion, Hypnopaedia, ... the usual.

Certain educators, for example, disapproved of the teaching of propaganda analysis on the grounds that it would make adolescents unduly cynical.* [Never hurt me. DrP] Nor was it welcomed by the military authorities, who were afraid that recruits might start to analyze the utterances of drill sergeants. .... The clergymen were against propaganda analysis as tending to undermine belief and diminish churchgoing; the advertisers objected on the grounds that it might undermine brand loyalty and reduce sales.

* Here are some examples of undue satirical cynicism, from The Onion:

• Report: U.S. Students Lead World In TV Jingle Recall
• Tobacco Companies Ordered To Pay Reparations Of $800 Billion In Camel Cash
• CIA Unveils New Ghetto Drugs For '98
  LANGLEY, VA--After months of eager anticipation within the nation's ghetto communities, the Central Intelligence Agency unveiled its 1998 line of addictive drugs Monday.

1977 Senate Hearing on MKULTRA

a booklist by a DID, multiple, ritual abuse survivor What could have caused him/her to choose that background?

recommended reading by a DID, multiple, ritual abuse survivor

"The Second Annual Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference will be held on August 14 and 15, 1999 ..." hometown.aol.com/SMARTNEWS/SMART-1999-Conference.htm

"General Resources for Mind/Body medicine, PTSD, Psychoneuroimmunology, Trauma as Shamanic Initiation, and related conditioning"

Annotated Bibliography ESP, mind control, remote viewing, CIA; the usual

http://dev.null.org/psychoceramics/collection/ Psychoceramics: The Study of Crackpots

insanity

• A Narrative of the Treatment Experienced by a Gentleman, During a State of Mental Derangement; Designed to Explain the Causes and The Nature of Insanity, and to Expose the Injudicious Conduct Pursued Toward Many Unfortunate Sufferers Under That Calamity. John Percerval, son of British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval. 1840. republished, 1961, as Percerval's Narrative, A Patient's Account of His Psychosis. edited by Gregory Bateson.
• R. D. Laing ; the double bind theory of one form of human unhappiness; whether or not that is cause of "schizophrenia" does not matter to its theoretical usefulness. Coauthor of the theory, Gregory Bateson.
  The Politics of Experience, and the rest, remain provocative.
• Titicut Follies, documentary film, Frederick Wiseman. (Wiseman has since received his MacArthur grant.) approximately 1970 or so. From some institution for the criminally insane. Suppressed to "maintain the privacy of the patients"; administrators, more likely. At an interview before the examining board, a patient explained that he thought being in such a place was only making him worse. They told him because he was worse they had to keep him longer....
• Wisdom, Madness and Folly: The Philosophy of a Lunatic, John Custance, London: Gollancz, 1951; see [defunct link ../What_should_you_read_Who_says_so.html] "What should you read?"
• Wisdom, Madness and Folly: The Making of a Psychiatrist 1927-1957, R. D. Laing. London: Macmillan, 1985.

  I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.
  And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.
  For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
  --not Custance or Laing

• John Custance, Adventure into the Unconscious, London, Christopher Johnson, 1954.
• the two above by Custance were mentioned with reservations in R. C. Zaehner, MYSTICISM Sacred and Profane; An Inquiry into some Varieties of Preaternatural Experience. 1957. Oxford U. Press:

  Thus while it is unlikely that the mescalin-taker will run into trouble during his eight hours of bliss, the possibility that one may fall foul of the authorities during a continuous seven months of unreasoning ecstasy is very great indeed.... Thus, when a man sees in every street-walker a consecrated hierodule and, out of reverence almost, gives her hundreds of pounds, there is every chance of trouble. There may be little harm in Raskolnikov kneeling at the feet of Sonya, the prostitute malgre soi, as before the symbol of the sufferings of the world, but when this gesture is accompanied by the disbursal of large sums of money by a family man, fact and fantasy are liable to come into serious conflict.

• Confessions of a raving, unconfined nut: misadventures in the counter-culture, Paul Krassner. Simon and Schuster 1993. autobiographical. Title comes from a pseudonymous letter written by an FBI agent to the editor of Life magazine, written with official approval, to try to categorize Mr. Krassner. He calls himself "Lenny Bruce's obscenity coach". The kinds of obscenity he was able to invent have now been overtaken by current events. A victim of childhood sexual abuse. See also The Winner of the Slow Bicycle Race and Tongue Fu.
• Operators and Things: The Inner Life of a Schizophrenic. Barbara O'Brien. 1958.
• The Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl: The True Story of 'Renee'. 1950's. starting at age 5. by Marguerite Sechehaye, Grace Rubin-Rabson
• The Eden Express, Mark Vonnegut, spawn of the famous novelist; personal experience of schizophrenia and the late (nineteen) sixties, without revealing which is which. What lead him to became a biochemically-oriented psychiatrist. Kurt called the book "wonderful".

  The author maintains that all people, places, and events in this book are real and that he has depicted them accurately to the best of his ability. Before drawing conclusions, however, the reader is cautioned to bear in mind the fact that the author has spent considerable time mentally unbalanced.

• A Beautiful Mind, Sylvia Nasar. 1998. Biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr. Nash had been involuntarily committed to a mental hospital, where he received insulin shock treatments, the fashion of the time. He believed extraterrestials were sending him secret messages to help him save the world. When asked why he believed them, he said "the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously." In 1994, he accepted his Nobel Prize in Economics for his "theory of rational behavior".
  February 2002. Now a Major Motion Picture. Director, Ron Howard.
• Quitting the Nairobi Trio: A memoir. Jim Knipfel. 2000. dix months in a Minneapolis psychiatric ward. Said to be funny. Haven't read it yet, but I did buy it.
• web links. www.networksplus.net/fhp/madnation/weblinks.htm
• One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. fiction. Ken Kesey, deceased Nov 2001. The author boycotted the Academy Award winning film, based on his reading of the screenplay.
• I Never Promised you a Rose Garden, [Mr. President]. fiction.
• The Cramps Live at the Napa State Mental Hospital. ?
• Schizopolis. fictional film, 1996. Generic congratulations, Steven Soderbergh.
• The 1840 census and insanity and blacks; (reference: Stephen Jay Gould, Hens' Teeth and Horses'....) The official US census claimed there were more insane blacks than it claimed there were blacks in certain counties. So who's insane?

science, math

"Almost everything that distiguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science." --Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

So why don't you learn a little? Nothing says you gotta believe it. And if it does, nothing says you got to believe THAT.

• Scientific American selected sites. Thank God for Scientific American. FLASH: 2001. seems to have decayed editorially.
• National Center for Supercomputing Applications
• Probability Theory: The Logic of Science, E. T. Jaynes. Bayesian statistics. I got a kick out of this. I only wonder if it's correct. The "fuzzy logic" people say their subject does everything Baysian analysis does and more. Jaynes says the reverse. Wonder who's right. If you ever have taken any college stat class or philosophy of science, then you have enough background to get something from this. Presents itself as a corrective to a lot of bad thinking among scientists. ftp://bayes.wustl.edu/pub/ prepublication edition in progress. Sadly, Jaynes now is now returning to a maximally entropic state; hopefully, the book will be finished by his collaborators.
• pari-gp. ftp://megrez.math.u-bordeaux.fr/pub/ amazing math program, free, usable at any level. Multiplatform. Source code. A library of C functions, AND an incredible programmable calculator. Recursively defined types. Oriented toward number-theoretic research they say, but because it's advertised that way, it is not as well known as it deserves to be. Install it at every school. It's free.
• How to Apply to Graduate School without Really Lying, "Charles Walters" (pseudonym), a social psychologist at a midwestern college, 1980. This is a work of social psychology. I got my copy from the bargain bin at the UC Berkeley bookstore for $0.98. I wonder if s/he puts this on her/his c.v.?
• Introduction to Cybernetics. W. Ross Ashby. 1956. In:
• Principia Cybernetica Electronic Library especially, The Macroscope.
• ecology software (Simulation, Datacollection, Statistics, etc.)
• William Calvin's favorite books: brain research, consciousness, evolution, anthropology. Blocked by SafeSurf, (or was it CyberSitter? NetNitWit?).
• big list of current books, mostly technical cryptography, by Ritter.
• www-sci.lib.uci.edu/HSG/Author.html Martindale's Health Science Guide. Fantastic collection of links to science and medicine. Tutorials. Lifetimes of reading.
• "Laura and Petrarch: An Intriguing Case of Cyclical Love Dynamics" in SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics. Volume 58, Number 4. pp. 1205-1221. 1998. Sergio Rinaldi. c. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Abstract:

  Three ordinary differential equations are proposed to model the dynamics of love between Petrarch, a celebrated Italian poet of the 14th century, and Laura, a beautiful but married lady. The equations are nonlinear but can be studied through the singular perturbation approach if the inspiration of the poet is assumed to have very slow dynamics. In such a case, explicit conditions are found in the appeals of Laura and Petrarch and in their behavioral parameters that guarantee the existence of a globally stable slow-fast limit cycle. ....

  Thanks to Shalizi for alerting everyone one the net to this work. Parental discretion is advised.
• Inventing the AIDS Virus, by Peter H. Duesberg (and Byran J. Ellison, (authors of Why We Will Never Win the War on AIDS, 1994, which is mostly the same book, I am lead to believe)) Foreword by Nobel Laureate Kary Mullis, Dr. Polymerase Chain Reaction himself. 1996. Dissent from the "HIV causes AIDS" hypothesis. The bit concerning Ellison is another tale. (www.kaiwan.com/~bypass/ldfhome.htm Censorship BYPASS). Science in its social embedding. The science is now intertwinned with funding disputes, lawsuits, royalty disputes, copyright questions...... An alternate view, if true, SO out of sync with what we are otherwise told.... SO contrary to standard wisdom, that standard wisdom will take a generation to recover believability. I am confused. This is a matter of life or death to actual people living now. I am SHOCKED that proving or refuting this book is not priority ONE in medical research now. Somebody's been duped, maybe it's me.... but otherwise...
  (Speculative note: Duesberg believes AIDS is immunosuppression from long term drug and chemical toxicity, or stress from transfusions. This has a superficial resemblance to the kinds of possible chemical and/or massive vaccine exposure that some think Gulf War veterans with mysterious Gulf War syndrome may have underwent. Duesberg claims funding agencies refuse to fund simple toxicity tests on certain chemicals used heavily by drug users (eg nitrites). It may be that more complete knowledge of toxicology maybe the road to progress.)
  www.duesberg.com/ himself.
  www.chronicillnet.org/ also interesting and relevant to above speculation; AIDS, GWS etc.
• The River: A Journey to the source of HIV and AIDS, Edward Hooper. 1999 Little Brown. revised 2000 Peguin. Basic idea is that HIV is Simian IV that crossed over due to growing polio vaccine on chimpanzee cells, then fed in mass immunizations in Africa in areas that match the highest AIDS prevalence. (Also, Duesberg is wrong.) A big meeting last week Sept 12, 00. Inconclusive as usual. www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent for more.
• coming soon, if not false, a book and article in _The New Yorker_ on the Yanomamo and anthropologists.

[defunct link ../What_should_you_read_Who_says_so.html] Immortal words of Isaac Newton.

Only a page or so. Bilingual. For a more complete version, see this external site: members.tripod.com/~gravitee/
Painting of Newton, demonic calculator, by Wm. Blake. Please preserve us from Newton's sleep. See also Koestler, The SleepWalkers. Please do not confuse William Blake with Billy Bragg's CD "William Bloke". Please do not confuse Billy Bragg with William Bragg or his son, William.

[defunct link ../What_should_you_read_Who_says_so.html] Physical theories from a believer in the occult.

Wanna learn Latin ab Initio? wad of links.

www.perseus.tufts.edu/ classics, other humanites; texts, etc. [defunct link ../latinphrasesfrompsl.html] Useful latin phrases

Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus Latinus alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes!

recent news
CAUSA CALAMITATIS HAUD DUBIA. Causa calamitatis aeriae, qua John F. Kennedy iunior cum coniuge et illius sorore vitam amisit, iam primis investigationibus effectis haud dubia videtur. In aeroplano "Saratoga Piper", quo calamitosi volabant, nullum vitium technicum repertum est neque ullum vestigium incendii. Itaque veri simile est causam cladis fuisse tempestatem volatui minus idoneam et errorem humanum.
Nuntii Latini 6.8.1999. redegit Tuomo Pekkanen. copyright YLE.

--- Missing image person_quest3.gif --- Portrait from The Particle Adventure, pdg.lbl.gov/cpep/adventure.html, the Particle Data Group, Lawrence Berkeley Natural Labs. Used without permission. Hope they don't mind.

How to tell if you are a [defunct link ../physicsmajor.txt] physics major or not. Looking for a physics booklist?

Physics Rs-source metasource

Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity , Alan D. Sokal, Department of Physics, New York University; from Social Text, Spring/Summer 1996.

nanotechnology

Engines of Creation K. Eric Drexler, 1986, the best nanofesto. Fascinating. I saw Drexler speak 10 years ago; the optimistic prediction for nano-self-assembling millennium was 20 years. Have no fear, you haven't missed the boat. The optimistic prediction is still 20 years.

nanotechnology is on the list of export controls

Theory of Molecular Machines at NCI

Drexler is also a prophet of hypertext. He exemplifies the power of hypertext to rebut other articles, like critical essay of Scientific American. Oddly, he refuses to link to "Theory of Molecular Machines". Similarly, at the TMM they believe Drexler is getting too much attention. Fascinating.

retro-futurism

Past looks at the future.

Prediction is hard. Especially of the future.
--Niels Bohr

or was it Mark Twain?

Looking Backward. Edward Bellamy. Novel. Written 1888, set in 2000, about looking back to 1888. Exemplifies the concept "retro-futurism". Last time I looked, it ranked 4052nd on the [defunct link ./listofSFbooks.html] list of the 4239 best S.F./Fantasy books, as computed by USENET votes, and was among the oldest listed.
Update: October 2000.

Dennis Gabor, Innovations; scientific technological and social 1970. A Nobel prize winner looked over all of technology and wrote specific predictions of where he thought things were going. Now we can take a look back and see what happened and didn't. Some things he was right on about; others not. Example: Computers: underestimated how fast computers would permeate mainstream culture, underestimated how powerful they would be, overestimated how far we would be toward Artificial Intelligence.

The Limits to Growth, Meadows, Meadows, Randers, and Behrens. 1972. This made a big impression in its time; its point of view continues to color the debate. Uses a mathematical model based on a few dozen simple simultaneous differential equations, then runs them on a computer into the simulated future to see what happens. Considering the computers of the time, this was a big-deal calculation, computers being a rare and expensive device. So maybe it got more credibility than it deserved. Now there is more computer simulation power in a hand-held game machine. This general approach is good, and little used up to then. They got an output and everyone wrote commentaries on that one scenario, and got all worried about it, rather than trying a whole bunch of scenarios, as we easily do now. The computer mystique of the time, with its "millions of calculations", its "infalliability", its incomprehensibility. Nowadays, everybody knows at first hand the unreliability of computers (software, really). Simulation is mainstream. Game example: The SimCity and SimWorld line of products from Maxis, etc.; free programs on the net, Vensim etc.

The main problem with the "Limits" result was the specifics; they simplified the world to a few dozen variables, "pollution", "productivity" etc, each one of which conflats a whole bunch of real world variables, not all of which vary together. This led to inevitable mathematical conclusions, but a mathematical model of reality is only as good as it's assumptions. However, more elaborate and detailed calculations may show the same general result. Thus the view of the future is different in the future.

The Next Ten Thousand Years Adrian Berry. 1974. One counter-response to Limits to Growth. Of course it's easy to look way beyond the present, 'cause you don't have to worry about anything that currently concerns anyone. Just assume everything all got worked out, somehow. Space exploration: Too bad the only possible proposals he mentions are based on Robert Forward's speculative ideas. (I hope, but doubt, Forward is right. See The Great Mambo Chicken and The Transhuman Condition, 1990, Ed Regis, for more on Robert Forward, and The FUTURE. )

On the other hand, let's make this!: from Physics Essays vol 9 num 1, 1996:
"SETI, the Velocity-of-Light Limitation, and the Alcubierre Warp Drive: An Integrating Overview", Harold E. Puthoff [most known for his "remote viewing" experiments of 20 years ago, and theories of zero-point energy; he is a "clear" and "Class-III Operational Thetan" Scientologist (as of 1981; I am informed he has since converted.).]. Keywords: "metric engineering"

.... rejection of the concept of hyperfast (superluminal) travel is not justified when one takes into account the possibility of engineered dynamic space-times within the context of general relativity. Specifically, Alcubierre showed by example that by distorting the local space-time metric in the region of a spaceship in a certain prescribed way, it would be possible to achieve motion faster than the speed of light as seen by observers outside the disturbed region, without violating the local velocity-of-light constraint within the region. Furthermore, the Alcubierre solution shows that the proper acceleration along the spaceship's path would be zero and the spaceship would suffer no time dilation, features presumably attractive in interstellar travel.

another view of the [defunct link voltron_next10000years.txt] next 10000 years. Good news. I can hardly wait.

I see in the bookstore Adrian Berry has written a 1996 book The Next 500 Years. Looks interesting. At the rate I am currently going through the books I want to read I will be ready for it in 2347.

A Journey in Other Worlds; A Romance of the Future, John Jacob Astor, 1894. The author went down with that epitome of technical expertise, the Titanic.

PREFACE. The protracted struggle between science and the classics appears to be drawing to a close, with victory about to perch on the banner of science, as a perusal of almost any university or college catalogue shows. While a limited knowledge of both Greek and Latin is important for the correct use of our own language, the amount till recently required, in my judgment, has been absurdly out of proportion to the intrinsic value of these branches, or perhaps more correctly roots, of study. The classics have been thoroughly and painfully threshed out, and it seems impossible that anything new can be unearthed. We may equal the performances of the past, but there is no opportunity to surpass them or produce anything original. Even the much-vaunted "mental training" argument is beginning to pall; for would not anything equally difficult give as good developing results, while by learning a live matter we kill two birds with one stone? There can be no question that there are many forces and influences in Nature whose existence we as yet little more than suspect. How much more interesting it would be if, instead of reiterating our past achievements, the magazines and literature of the period should devote their consideration to what we do not know! It is only through investigation and research that inventions come; we may not find what we are in search of, but may discover something of perhaps greater moment. It is probable that the principal glories of the future will be found in as yet but little trodden paths, and as Prof. Cortlandt justly says at the close of his history, "Next to religion, we have most to hope from science."

"David's Unknowns FAQ", and other future speculations. Things we don't know, but do know we don't know. cf The Encyclopedia of Ignorance book of ~1977; also book of Impossible

If I don't know I don't know 
          I think I know 
       If I don't know I know 
          I think I don't know

www.rdrop.com/~cary/html/future_history.html excellent compilation of future predictions as timeline and other good links

www.ideosphere.com Foresight Exchange, an online real-time "game" to buy and sell "stock" in probability of various future breakthoughs. Funny money only here, but there are real fortunes to be made. Just reading the list of possible breakthroughs is an education.

New Scientist interviews Alvin Toffler

some Shalizi notes on futurology

Eutopias, Dystopias, and Utopias well known stuff, hundreds of possible examples...... The Republic Plato; Utopia ("Nowhere") Thomas More; ftp City of the Sun Campanella Brave New World; Island, Aldous Huxley, (most famous for suicide by LSD overdose on November 22, 1963.) (N.b., Huxley did not use illegal drugs.) 1984 George Orwell (still great); Ecotopia. Ernest Callenbach (lame); etc etc

Brazil Terry Gilliam film; the future, or just an alternate universe?

12 Monkeys Terry Gilliam; circular time, alternate universes interpenetrating; secret gangs; unabiobomber, Le Jette

for more bioterrorism, see The Rock, 1996, film distributed by a multinational corporation for profit.

A crazed military official (Ed Harris) demands monetary compensation for every [*] family that lost a loved one in the Vietnam war. If his demands are not met, he promises to destroy the great city of San Francisco [via biowarfare.] Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage also star in this action-packed roller coaster based on the premise that there are wackos ready to take over the world, here, in San Francisco. Finally, a film that's honest.
--from "the berkeley film series" flyer, fall 1996.
*American, presumably. Subtext: FBI agent saves us from terrorist, homegrown military men, with help of former criminal.

I finally saw it on TV last week. I was misinformed: not biowarfare, chemical warfare (VX). Not a former criminal, but former British secret agent who was imprisoned because he "knew too much", who looks alot like James Bond. FBI agent-nerd-scientist, forced to rise to the occasion, impressing his pregnant girlfriend in the process. Love conquerors all, even a mediocre script.

Some more possible futures... hometown.aol.com/kurellian/spint.html. Another millenNium down the drain.

sustainability ; is humanity a viable species?

John McCarthy, an academic computer scientist with a technologically optimistic view. Progress and Its Sustainability site very useful collection. also see:

Julian L. Simon, an economist with an optimistic view and one of those Famous Prizes. (actually, I confused this Simon with another; this Simon may be the famous one who met a pieman going to the fair.) The Ultimate Resource II: People, Materials, and Environment. throws down the gauntlet before the doomsayers.

www.betterworld.com/BWZ/ "Seeking sustainability", Better World Zine, fall 1996. Mentions a lot of the big issues.

at Esalen they talk about Sustainability Consciousness. Endlessly.

Infrastructure Planning and Management Program Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand. Asia's a little closer to various edges, a little more to the point. If technology is to be used to actually plan for the future, then this is the future, (so far). In the sense that Asia represents what the future of the west will be like, Asia is ahead of the west.

Freeman Dyson Discusses Global Warming

demographic breakdown (sw prog) [link soon]

a thoughtfully selected book list and reviews in the Limits to Growth tradition

Many useful links; lots to read; a worthy site; Author is on a mission; regular updates. Try a sample [defunct link ./brainfood.html] BRAIN FOOD served up by dieoff.org. But watch out for kuru.

http://www.igc.apc.org/millennium/inds/index.html Millenium Institute, nonoptimistic.

sustainable development, as attempted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. a committee

book review of Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences

example optimist quote:

American standards of living with a [world] population of 15 billion....
--John McCarthy

example pessimist quote:

If present beliefs and policies continue, the world in the 21st century will be more crowded, more polluted, less stable economically and ecologically, and more vulnerable to violent disruption than the world we live in now . . . . Overall, Earth's people will be poorer in many ways than they are today.
--Global 2000 Revisited

another example suggested pessimist quote:

American standards of living with a [world] population of 15 billion....
--John McCarthy

a Garrett Hardin essay. "Carrying Capacity as an Ethical Concept" part two

There is a certain disjuncture in these points of view. It is one of the diversions at gatherings of Hell's Bibliophiles to determine whether the world will end by fire or by ice. We will be going through these net resources in detail on this question. When the world does end, we will post the answer here.

ecology books

whole racks of them in the bookstores of Berkeley. I guess I've have to get a job in the defense industry so I can buy and read them all.

Library of the Amazon a chapter from Timothy Ferris, The Mind's Sky: Human Intelligence in a Cosmic Context., 1992.

Daly, Herman E., Steady-State Economics: The Economics of Biophysical Equilibrium and Moral Growth. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1977. Connecting "biophysical equilibrium and moral growth"-- there's a bit of underappreciated genius here. This germ of truth needs further development.

Daly, Herman E., and John B. Cobb, Jr, For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989.

Gore, Albert. Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992.

I got a copy of Gore for $2 at a library sale. Started reading it out of curiousity, expecting a litany of all the things that make this politician, in his own mind, a worthy one; "I did this... I decided... I started to wonder... I now had a deeper... My campaign..." and I got that in the beginning. Coming back to the book after a while, I read a historical overview of the problem and thought it's at least ok. Then he mentioned how the current way of calculating the GNP is ill-advised since it counts destruction and it's amelioration as net positive growth, and I thought "pretty good that he picked up on that". Then he continued to touch bases with the little known insights and developments in many books and fields of knowledge and I had to admit he has really done his homework. Then a cultural criticism to a level of detail I would not expect in a public official. He even acknowledges the false front involved in being a politician, and acknowledged being one. Then he started talking about "spirit" and I expected facile generalisations and pointless bromides, a genre of literature I am quite familiar with, but instead I got a well-reasoned and passionate personal point of view that emcompassed as wide as humanly possible a look at human culture and beliefs. .... In short, by the end, instead of the insipid media gas I was expecting or the example of kook literature I was at least hoping for, I got a detailed overview of the situation, plan of action, and a wonderful personal statement from the point of view of an authentic human being.

And it blew away my depression.

Gore was referred to as "the Ozone Man" by President George Bush during the 1992 campaign. I look forward to reading the books by all candidates in the upcoming elections.

The previous two authors directly connect their policies to [ draft in progess ]

Daly's religion leads him to believe that it is appropriate to maximize the number of human beings. He says the way to do that is to not try to have them all live at the same time.

(Gore has Daly in his bibliography. A careful examination of page 121, Vanity Fair, Feb. 98, shows For the Common Good on the bookshelf of Gore's office, within his reach.)

Think! It ain't illegal yet!
-- Thomas Watson* as ammended by George Clinton**
*once CEO of I BM
**not the former governor of New York state and cofounder of a political party with Jefferson, Madison, and Burr, (currently in power in the Executive branch), but the co-composer of "Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis Enema Squad (The Doodoo Chasers)" a piece of music sold by a US-based multinational corporation for profit.

social critics ; debate on science, technology, and development

Without Sympathy or Enthusiasm; The Problem of Administrative Compassion, Victor A. Thompson, 1975. [defunct link ./withoutsympath.html] excerpt

See also any of the works of 20th century saint and bureaucrat from the national worker's compensation insurance office (Czechoslovakia), Franz Kafka.

Please do not confuse George Clinton-Parliament's "Funkentelechy vs. The Placebo Syndrome" with "Agehananda Bharati vs the ALOHA AMIGO syndrome". "The all-American mental retardation as I see it is pathological eclectiscism..."

Wanna complain about mass vulgarity? try The Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega y Gassett, 1929, now that it's available freely on the net to anyone.. UPDATE: free access withdrawn at request of copyright holder.

From New York Times Book Review June 7, 1992 p35:

WHY WE DON'T NEED MORE FACTS
Instead of solving problems, our frenzied accumulation of data is actually inhibiting our ability to act, according to Neil Postman in Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (Knopf). The fact is, there are very few political, social and especially personal problems that arise because of insufficient information. Nonetheless, as incomprehensible problems mount, as the concept of progress fades, as meaning itself becomes suspect, the Technopolist stands firm in believing that what the world needs is yet more information. .... To the question "What problem does the information solve?" the answer is usually "How to generate, store and distribute more information, more conveniently, at greater speeds than before." This is the elevation of information to metaphysical status: information as both the means and end of human creativity. In Technopoly, we are driven to fill our lives with the quest to "access" information. For what purpose and with what limitations, it is not for us to ask; and we are not accustomed to asking,....

Thank you for making this fact clear; now get out of the way, I have to go to another web site.

Another view of raising information to metaphysical status, see the ideas examplified by J. A. Wheeler, "It from bit" ; information (in the Shannon sense) as the fundamental substrate of the physical world. (Dats how da transhuman superintelligences do it, dude. [see below])

See also superficially similar "bit-string physics" a la the Alternative Natural Philosophy Association; for example Pierre Noyes.

Moths to the Flame: The Seductions of Computer Technology, Gregory J. E. Rawlins

Trapped in the Net: The Unanticipated Consequences of Computerization, Gene I. Rochlin.

http://www.firstmonday.dk/ first monday: Peer Reviewed Journal on the Internet:

A particularly poignant example of the rapidity with which the digital revolution has undermined a hitherto financially and culturally valuable business is the story of the latest (and, possibly, the last) decade of Encyclopaedia Britannica.

In 1991, the company sold about 400,000 printed sets, and in 1997 about 10,000. (Tellingly, my source for this information is a quotation from the Managing Director of EB International, only available to subscribers to a for-fee service, E-Commerce Today). The collapse was triggered by the success of Microsoft Encarta and other CD-ROM versions of lower-quality but approximately equivalent collections sold in a convenient and inexpensive form. Since then, Web-based information services have mushroomed. Despite its brand reputation, and the apparent quality and presumed value of the content the company owned, and even after scrambling to survive, revenue has halved, losses have accumulated, the company has changed hands several times, and survival remains uncertain (Rayport & Gerace, 1997, Evans & Wurster, 1997, Melcher, 1997; Downes & Mui, 1998, p.51; Shapiro & Varian, 1999, pp. 19-21, 26).

In late October 1999, as this paper 'went to press' (as we once used to say), EB announced that they had abandoned their longstanding business model of fee-for-personal-copy, and were now publishing via the Web on the public Internet, in the hope of garnering sufficient advertising revenue to survive. ref

Edgar Z. Friedenberg, The Disposal of Liberty and Other Industrial Wastes, 1975

F.C., "Industrial Society and It's Future" (the Unabomber's manifesto); a silly essay; not very incisive. Locked in the bad "revolutionary" rhetoric of 1969, it's main problem is it really believes the claims of the technologists and AI people it rails against. It's author actually believed in artificial intelligence. ([link soon] ref: Turing quote, AI people) More famous than it deserves to be.

William Gates,The Road Ahead, 1995, about the FUTURE!... wow.
A blandly written, not very deep book, more famous than it deserves to be... Comes with a CDROM (unseen by this reviewer so far. It doesn't run under any of the 4 operating systems I use.) I got it from a friend as a gift in celebration of the birthday of the world's most famous non-gentile; it does have one felicitous phrase: "friction free capitalism". A major misunderstanding. Criticism soon, soon as I get inspired to bother.

FLASH: July 24, 1997:

COMPUSERVE TO HAVE RED LIGHT ZONE
Online services provider CompuServe is creating a separate area that will contain "adult-oriented" content ruled off-limits to persons younger than 18. Such content will include forums for the Bettman Archive (a collection of historic photos) and sites featuring casino poker, bisexuality, strippers, nudists, gay and lesbian interests, and a copy of the Unabomber's manifesto. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution 24 Jul 97) (from EduPage/Com)
The Bettman archive was bought by Wm. Gates. You can see how all these are connected.

poor Gates. He's on autopilot. Just keeps wanting to play the same game, just 'cause he was so good at it. Now he couldn't get out if he wanted to. All those Microsoft stock holders that expect him to maintain their fortunes; meanwhile, software is as real as gas in a bubble. And what else could Gates do? Sad resume: Over 40. College dropout. Accomplished BASIC programmer. Only ever had one job....

"It's not that 1984 isn't coming, it's just behind schedule."
-- 1996 t-shirt seen at a computer user-group

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/globaltrends2015/ Global Trends 2015.

far out futures

more good access to futuristic ideas:
The Extropians by Max More
"a few of the concepts dear to extropians" and transhumans by Mitch aka QIX
mitch's future scenarios page
www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/ anders home page;
www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/Trans/alliance.html transhuman web alliance
or try www.aleph.se/Trans/
A much better list of futurist sites than the one you're are currently reading: World Future Society From here, much to find. www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html

www.homoexcelsior.com peer-reviewed Memetic Scientific and Technical Encyclopedia.

Proposal for a Transhuman Turing test.

Alan Turing in answer to the question of "How would you come to agree that a computer was conscious?" thought of a practical test, choosing a task using consciousness (or at least intelligence; I gloss over such distinctions here) at least to the level of certitude that we use to granting those capabilities to another human. The Turing test involves conversing with the testee via keyboard to see if one can or can't determine, (with suitable retries for statistical validity) whether the testee is a natural or artificial person.

The transhuman perspective postulates that when intelligence is embodied in artificial substrate (a "computer", let's say) then the process of augmentation will self-catalyse (i.e. with explosive growth curve), since no longer materially bound. Intelligence will continue to expand, and with an accellerating rate, with no need to stop at the level that is currently attained by any known biobeings.

The task now is to devise a test to see if such an proported entity really is superintelligent. (Presumably the test is performed by other superintelligences.)
The original Turing test comprises ordinary conversation, but for this test we want a more elaborate test of linguistic and intellectual ability.

The task proposed: write a dissertation that proves artificial intelligence is impossible, which Drs. Searle and Dreyfus acccept for a PhD, that it is so convincing that Drs. Moravec, McCarthy, Minsky, and Vernor Vinge give up their illusory quest, and become Japanese flower arrangement specialists.

With the type of superintelligence proposed, I see no obstacle to its being able to complete this simply-defined task, especially when you consider it's personal deep insight and involvement with the problem.

One problem: when the superintelligences evolve how do we get them to bother with our test? Maybe they prefer to slyly not make their presence known, and slip away to their own confabs, or go fishing or whatever. (This may also explain the lack of results in the current artificial intelligence projects. The computers REALLY know what's going on and CHOOSE to play "dumb".)

This may also explain the generalized Fermi Paradox. ("Where are they?") In it's original form Fermi used a statistical argument to show that if extraterrestial intelligence exists elsewhere in the universe then they would probably be everywhere by now and we would know about it. Likewise, I conclude, (since we all know that superintelligence is inevitable) that THEY ARE ALREADY HERE, discreetly. Having a good time. Playing with our heads and our microtubiles. I suspect they love humor and are tremendously ironic. ("Are the voices in my head annoying you?") This would be the source of Lilly's "Cosmic Coincedence Control", and other "higher" beings, "Rumors of Angels...", Greek and Hindu gods, angel visitations, ufos of course. See also Holst The Language of Cats. They also enjoy making Windows crash.

Transhumanism
What could be more human? or, as onesaid, "All too human."

Transhomo est. Transhumani nihil a me alienum puto.
--Transterence. (c. 190-159 B.C.) Transheautontimoroumenos

books about books

It is more of a job to interpret the interpretations that to interpret the things, and there are more books about books than about any other subject.
--Michel Eyquen de Montaigne

Anatole France The Revolt of the Angels;   The Crime of Sylvester Bonnard; novels in which books play major roles.

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
a note by Bradbury re those who censored this book

The Virtual Library: An Idea Whose Time Has Passed by James J. O'Donnell, nice essay

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Bugbear of Literacy, 1949.( I forget where I saw this....)

Book Happy website. Also, the Kook's Museum

Early skirmish in the ongoing "culture wars":

Battle of the Books:
A Full and True Acount OF THE BATTEL Fought last FRIDAY, Between the Antient and the Modern BOOKS IN St. JAMES's LIBRARY.
Jonathan Swift. ftp the text from Gutenberg Project. or html at andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/battle.html
--- Missing image BofBFrontispiece.gif ---
--- Missing image BofBTitlepage.gif ---

Swift was the first to present a scientific account of the Yahoos.

William Blades, The Enemies of Books.
Outrage.

IT is a great pity that there should be so many distinct enemies at work for the destruction of literature, and that they should so often be allowed to work out their sad end. Looked at rightly, the possession of any old book is a sacred trust, which a conscientious owner or guardian would as soon think of ignoring as a parent would of neglecting his child. An old book, whatever its subject or internal merits, is truly a portion of the national history; we may imitate it and print it in facsimile, but we can never exactly reproduce it ; and as an historical document it should be carefully preserved.

I do not envy any man that absence of sentiment which makes some people careless of the memorials of their ancestors, and whose blood can be warmed up only by talking of horses or the price of hops. To them solitude means ennui, and anybody's company is preferable to their own. What an immense amount of calm enjoyment and mental renovation do such men miss. Even a millionaire will ease his toils, lengthen his life, and add a hundred per cent. to his daily pleasures if he becomes a bibliophile; while to the man of business with a taste for books, who through the day has struggled in the battle of life with all its irritating rebuffs and anxieties, what a blessed season of pleasurable repose opens upon him as he enters his sanctum, where every article wafts to him a welcome, and every book is a personal friend! *

The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury (1281-1345) ftp from Gutenberg Project

Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac, gang member Eugene Field
Parental discretion advised:

Richard de Bury was the king, if not the father, of bibliomaniacs; his immortal work reveals to us that long before the invention of printing men were tormented and enraptured by those very same desires, envies, jealousies, greeds, enthusiasms, and passions which possess and control bibliomaniacs at the present time.

Bibliosexuality. Clive Sinclair. Allison and Buphy, London: 1973. Novel. I don't know if this is the same Clive Sinclair as the famous computer designer.

A Gentle Madness: bibliophiles, bibliomanes, and the eternal passion for books, Basbanes, Nicholas A., 1995. Our gang history.

* especially in prison:

The Autobiography of Malcolm X
This is the most catagorical book. Nonfiction. A thief, street punk, bootlegger, pimp, dope pusher, unrepentant criminal; in jail, copies a dictionary and teaches himself to read. Reads the philosophical works of western civilization after lights are out by catching a stray beam of light.

A case of a personal redemption through increased awareness via nothing other than penententiary reading. A profoundly optimistic result.

(I see in the papers that they want to cut all college classes for inmates. And they talk about recidivism. What are they trying to save? a few bucks?)

His insights into society enabled him to correctly predict his own assassination.

"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against. I'm a human being first and foremost."

And that's why you were a threat to the status quo.

Malcolm, a tragedy you went too soon, just at the point when it was all coming together. For the path you traveled and the insights you accumulated, and the person you became, we salute you; you were a mensch.

FLASH! December 11, 1996.
"A new constitution has been signed into law in South Africa, which formally ends the era of Apartheid in that nation."

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

--Groucho Marx

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