DEEP SCRATCH

Author: flyagaric23

  • Facestuck

     

    Facestuck by Steven James Pratt (3/08/12)

    1.
    Oh my god, those faces all literally glued to the screen, right across the planet, literally super-glued to the glass plasma crystal screens, unable to move. Eyes look sideways in terror at the images playing in front of them. Gangs of pixels assemble together in self-organized configurations: the words ‘Cheeky mouthy idiots’ repeated in endless fonts and colours. The images of others also stuck to the screen.

    A few brave idiots in the initial panic of finding their face stuck to the screen pulled themselves off, leaving a good part of their face still stuck to the screen like a rare pork chop. Many of these people died as a result of their injuries, and some remained still half stuck to the screen, yet with mutilated mouths and bits of flesh dangling around the chin that made eating exceedingly difficult.

    “Next the phones, engage.” A voice said.

    All mobile phones around the world were now stuck to their users face and the ear in particular, plus the original phone call was interrupted with a voice repeating the word ‘yes’. Scenes of equal chaos and horror soon followed, enhanced by the images from any camera relaying live feeds, broadcasting the distressed individuals pain and anguish between the literally billions of victims.

    2.
    Some proposed the facestuck virus acted upon the carbon 60 molecule, triggered by certain vibrations quickly developing a highly dangerous and sticky surface, impossible to part from organic materials such as skin once contact is made. Grafting, which results in a permanent scar is a necessary process, but due to the Billions of victims many have spent decades with their devices stuck to their faces and ears.

    An underground black market arose in cheap surgical….

    (more…)

  • 21/12/2012: The end of capitalism starting with Coca Cola

    The recent news from Bolivia, concerning their decisions to kick out the coca cola company due to violence, corruption and unrestricted finance capitalism, makes me sit up and listen and engage once again with the 2012 phenomena.

    Here we have the kind of tipping point that could begin a new era of corporate responsibility and humanity waking up to the horrors of unrestricted finance capitalism and discovering ways to say no, and kick out the culprits from theor community and/or country, protecting the citizens from any nefarious impact and damage, such as that damage Coca-Cola have, to South America in particular, but the entire world and it’s citizens generally.

    Fly Agaric 23 retains a special symbiotic relationship with coca-cola and the coca-cola company, and a special symbiotic relationship with Father Christmas. Both of these mysterious western capitalist phenomena employ the ‘red and white’ color scheme, as does the ‘fly agaric: Amanita Muscaria mushroom. Take note. Fly Agaric grows without charge in the wilderness of natural abundance. Father Christmas and Coca-Cola require a multi Billion Dollar all-around-the-world system of propaganda, lies, deciet and promotional campaigning to keep up their mythological capitalist show.

    I represent this news from Bolivia, and hope to help volley the message far and wide. I have added a description of Belching out the Devil by Mark Thomas, for some further insight into the coca-cola curse. Peace, steve fly agaric 23 (acrillic)

    Amsterdam, Sensi Empire (2/8/12)

    “Bolivia Set To Banish Coca-Cola To Mark Mayan End Of Capitalism

    For most Americans, Bolivia is a third world South American country last robbed by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. However this impoverished nation is making headlines due to its Minister of External Affairs recent announcement that the Coca-Cola Company, one of the world’s largest corporations, is to be booted out of there by year’s end.

    David Choquehuanca, the minister in question, explained that Coca-Cola will be expelled from Bolivia on the same day that the Mayan calendar enters a new cycle–December 21. According to Choquehuanca, the date marks the end of capitalism and the start of a culture of life in community-based societies. In order to celebrate that, Bolivia’s government is already planning a series of events that will take place at the Southern Hemisphere’s Summer Solstice on La Isla del Sol, one of the largest islands in Lake Titicaca.

    “The twenty-first of December 2012 is the end of selfishness, of division. The twenty-first of December has to be the end of Coca-Cola and the beginning of mocochinche (a local peach-flavored soft drink),” Choquehuanca told reporters at a political rally for Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales. “The planets will line up after 26,000 years. It is the end of capitalism and the beginning of communitarianism,” he added.

    It’s already been rumored that Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, will follow suit, encouraging his country to ditch the American beverage for soft drinks produced locally.

    It’s curious that Bolivia decided to forbid Coca-Cola in its territory, considering that one of the soft drink’s main ingredients is said to be coca extract (Coca-Cola refuses to confirm that, saying that this is part of their secret formula.) — http://www.forbes.com/sites/andersonantunes/2012/08/01/bolivia-set-to-banish-coca-cola-to-mark-mayan-end-of-capitalism/

    “But it’ll make zero difference to Mark Thomas’s tireless campaigning. Stand-up comic turned agent provocateur and writer, in his latest book Belching Out The Devil, Thomas travels the world to expose the flaws of the Coca-Cola business system: a bottling plant in Colombia where trade unionists are routinely murdered by paramilitary death squads, child labour in fields surrounding a sugar mill in El Salvador and the unfathomable decision of opening a plant heavily reliant on water in an area of India already prone to drought.

    The Coca-Cola Company absolves itself of any blame because on paper it doesn’t actually own any of these franchise plants or the independently owned sugar mill. All it does is manufacture the syrup ingredient to make the fizzy pop. “All of this stuff is about Coke’s tentacles and the way it works,” says Thomas. “It draws these lines of demarcation between responsibility.” —http://thequietus.com/articles/00687-coca-colonisation-mark-thomas-on-coke

    Steven James Pratt

  • Massive Online Open Courses: From McLuhan to MOOC.

    Note to Maybe Logic Academy!
    http://www.maybelogic.org/

    Massive Online Open Courses: From McLuhan to MOOC.

    “In this summer of 2012 the buzz in the world of higher education is about massive online open courses, or “MOOC.” It seems that cyber-prophet Marshall McLuhan saw this coming.

    As a classroom teacher for over 35 years who is about to set a virtual foot onto the campus of MOOC U (my neuroethics course will be offered by Coursera in January, the other major entrant into MOOC being EdX), I wonder what I’m getting into. I have a feeling I’m not alone among my dozens of colleagues in this regard. Surely they also wonder if the transmission of knowledge to which they’ve given much of their lives is about to undergo an unpredictable transformation in which they will play a part. University of Virginia professor Mark Edmundson is dubious that the classroom artistry of the truly fine teacher can be captured in the online experience.

    Edmundson has a point. I know exactly what he means when he compares those precious moments of didactic flow in a physical classroom to jazz improvisation.

    Yet the precise contours of the MOOC experience and its implications for higher education remain a mystery to everyone, including the investors, institutions and instructors. All we really know is that (1) the sheer number of potential online students is mind-boggling and hard to resist; and (2) the “production values” need to be far better than those for the university-produced online lectures I’ve watched in the past few years.

    The MOOCs need to hit that sweet spot between two hours of a static lecturer-focused camera and the flash-and-dash of TED Talks. But at this stage that still doesn’t tell us much about what to expect.

    In search of an oracle, I stumbled upon a piece co-authored by Marshall McLuhan in 1967 in, of all places, Look magazine (many teachers worry that online students will look but not think). The article forecast the learning experience of “The Class of 1989”; the same issue included a long essay by a Look senior editor on “The Generation Gap.” Just as young people were demanding more “relevance” in schools, McLuhan recites the longstanding progressive critique of standardized education as “bodies of knowledge” and lectures, the latter seen “one of the least effective [mode of education] ever devised by man,” soon to go the way of all other “mechanized production line[s].”

    Instead, McLuhan wrote, “the new modes of instantaneous, long-distance human communication — radio, telephone, television — are linking the world’s people in a vast net of electric circuitry that creates a new depth and breadth of personal involvement and events and breaks down the old, traditional boundaries that made specialization possible.” McLuhan thus foresaw the end of the mass-produced student. “When computers are properly used, in fact, they are almost certain to increase individual diversity. A worldwide network of computers will make all of mankind’s factual knowledge available to all students everywhere in a matter of minutes or seconds.”

    Not bad for 1967, just as the Pentagon’s packet switching technology was indeed laying the groundwork for “a worldwide network of computers.”

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-d-moreno/massive-online-open-cours_b_1695128.html

  • Amanita symbiosis system

     As Mushrooms Evolve to Live With Trees, They Give Up DNA Associated With Decomposing Cellulose
    ScienceDaily (July 18, 2012)
    “…if you’re going to actively form a cooperative relationship with a tree, you probably shouldn’t simultaneously be trying to break it apart and eat it. But it’s a very tricky dance to form these kinds of tight, cooperative interactions, and I think this work shows there is a cost associated with that. You have to change, you have to commit, and it can become a sort of gilded cage — these mushrooms are very successful…” —http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120718192047.htm

    Steven James Pratt

  • RAWIllumination.net: Talking with Steve "Fly Agaric 23" Pratt

    RAWIllumination.net: Talking with Steve “Fly Agaric 23” Pratt: Few, if any, people have been more energetic in setting up Internet sites to promote the works and though of Robert Anton Wilson than Steve …

    Steven James Pratt

  • RAW360 , net (Soon Come)

    RAW360 . NET (Coming soon)

    http://raw360.net/

    Steven James Pratt

  • DEE: The Arch-conjuror of England. BRUNO: The arch-conjuror of Europe?

    Who could resist a new book about the celebrated, notorious “arch-conjuror of England,” Dr. John Dee (1527-1609)? A contemporary of Queen Elizabeth I, Dee possessed what was probably the finest private library in the country. He lived near the Thames in a house with a name that any Gothic novelist would steal in a minute: Mortlake. As a young man, he was a pupil of Gerard Mercator (whose maps are still famous) and studied the works of all the most notable alchemists and natural philosophers of Europe, including Paracelsus, Raymond Lull, Johannes Trithemius and Henry Cornelius Agrippa. Dee might even have met Giordano Bruno, who, during a visit to England, joined the circle of their mutual friend, the occult-minded poet Sir Philip Sidney. (In 1600, Bruno was burned at the stake, ostensibly for his heretical beliefs about the nature of the universe.) In 1584, this English wizard even made a laborious journey to Rudolf II’s Prague, the center for astrological and hermetic research in the 16th century — in essence, the capital of magic. http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-arch-conjuror-of-england-john-dee-by-glyn-parry/2012/06/06/gJQAOGOUJV_story.html

    Galileo was only placed under house arrest because of his “repentance,” but others such as Michael Servetus (1511-1553) and Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) were burnt at the stake. http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-9-113602-Lessons-from-the-Galileo-affair

  • Fly Agaric in Ireland and Muscarine as asthma treatment

    Everyone is charmed when we chance upon our first Fly Agaric, the iconic red and white seat of many a storybook fairy or elf. Just then the sky darkens, the mother and father of all downpours leaving no shelter. Waterproofs are useless, we can only head back to the hotel? http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/grow-wild-in-the-country-195283.html

    Go to: Muscarinic receptors in the lung In the lungs, anticholinergic compounds block muscarinic receptors on airway smooth muscle, glands and nerves to prevent muscle contraction, gland secretion and enhance neurotransmitter release. There are five muscarinic receptor subtypes [designated M1 through M5 by the IUPHAR (Caulfield and Birdsall, 1998)] all belonging to the large family of seven transmembrane G-protein coupled receptors. In human lung (and in all animal species tested), acetylcholine induces bronchoconstriction by stimulating M3 (Figure 1) receptors on smooth muscle (Roffel et al., 1990). Although airway smooth muscle contraction is mediated by M3 receptors, the majority of muscarinic receptors on airway smooth muscle are actually M2 (Barnes, 1993). These M2 receptors contribute indirectly to airway smooth muscle contraction by limiting β-adrenoceptor-medicated relaxation through inhibition of adenylate cyclase (Fernandes et al., 1992). Glandular secretion is also mediated predominantly by M3 muscarinic receptors on submucosal cells (Marin et al., 1976; Borson et al., 1980; Phillips et al., 2002). Figure 1 Muscarinic receptors in lungs. Muscarinic receptors (MR) are present throughout the lungs and control smooth muscle contraction, gland secretion, acetylcholine (ACh) release from parasympathetic nerves and probably also inflammatory cells. Only receptors (more …) Muscarinic receptors are also present on parasympathetic nerves supplying the lungs (Fryer and Maclagan, 1984). M2 muscarinic receptors on postganglionic parasympathetic nerves (Faulkner et al., 1986; Fryer et al., 1996) limit acetylcholine release, thus providing a physiologically relevant, negative feedback control over acetylcholine release (Fryer and Maclagan, 1984; Baker et al., 1992). Blocking M2 receptors with mmuscarinic antagonists including atropine and ipratropium or using selective M2 receptor antagonists such as gallamine, significantly potentiates vagally induced bronchoconstriction (Fryer and Maclagan, 1984; 1987; Blaber et al., 1985; Faulkner et al., 1986). Neuronal M2 receptors are vulnerable, and thus their function is significantly decreased after respiratory viral infection, antigen challenge, or exposure to organophosphates or ozone (Empey et al., 1976; Aquilina et al., 1980; Fryer and Jacoby, 1991; Schultheis, 1992; Schultheis et al., 1994; Sorkness et al., 1994). They are also less functional in humans with asthma (Minette et al., 1989). Decreased function of the neuronal M2 receptors is mediated by various mechanisms including blockade by endogenous antagonists and down-regulation of receptor expression. The resulting increase in acetylcholine release is thought to be an important mechanism of airway hyperreactivity. Clinically, anticholinergic drugs are used as bronchodilators in combination with anti-inflammatory steroids in the treatment of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Asthma is characterized by variable airflow limitation that is partially reversible spontaneously or with treatment. Underlying this airflow limitation is chronic inflammation that increases airway hyperresponsiveness to various stimuli (EPR-3, 2007). COPD is characterized by chronic airflow limitation that is not fully reversible. Patients with COPD can experience acute worsening in symptoms. These exacerbations are characterized by increased sputum production and shortness of breath (Rabe et al., 2007). COPD and asthma symptoms overlap; however, the most distinguishing difference between conditions is airflow limitation reversibility. This review covers the history of clinically relevant anticholinergic drugs in asthma and COPD. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3085867/

    Steven James Pratt

  • Joyce’s Voices by Bogus Magus (from Only Maybe blog)

    Friday, June 01, 2012

    Joyce’s Voices

    For Bloomsday this year (16 June 2012) the BBC will be handing Radio 4 over to Ulysses. Throughout the day there will be readings of a special adaptation of the text, along with live broadcasts from Dublin (where fans re-enact moments from this complex book. Sadly, this may not prove accessible to all countries.

    This will be an edited version, not the ‘complete’ text which was broadcast in 1982 (which took nearly 30 hours).

    The details below are from the BBC Media Centre (without permission) which contains further information.

    Here, at a glance, are the main Bloomsday broadcasts on Radio 4:

    Part 1 09.00 – 10.30: Saturday Live From the Martello Tower to School
    Sian and Richard present a special Bloomsday edition of the show, which will include the first three extracts from the drama as well as discussion and location reports, with input from Mark Lawson in Dublin.

    Part 2 10.30 – 11.00 From Bloom’s House, through the Morning Streets, to a Funeral

    Part 3 12.00 – 12.30 From the Beach, to a Newspaper Office, into Davy Byrne’s Pub

    Part 4 14.30 – 15.30 The Library, Through the Lunchtime Streets, to the Ormond Hotel

    Part 5 17.30 – 18.00 In Barney Kiernan’s Pub

    Part 6 20.00 – 22.00 From Sandymount Beach at Evening, to the Maternity Hospital, and into Nighttown

    22.15 – 23.00: Ulysses Today Mark Lawson chairs a discussion about the abiding popularity of Ulysses and its relevance today, with Declan Kiberd, author of Ulysses And Us – The Art Of Everyday Living; Professor Anne Fogarty, Director of the Dublin James Joyce Summer School; and others.

    Part 7 23.00 – 00.00 From a Cab-man’s Shelter, to Eccles Street and Home

    In the week before the Bloomsday broadcasts, Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra will be broadcasting a number of programmes on the theme of Ulysses:

    James Joyce had a fine singing voice and sang professionally as a young man. In James Joyce’s Playlist, David Owen Norris and guests will listen to some of Joyce’s favourite songs in the Martello Tower in Dublin where he lived for a time. This will be broadcast on Saturday, June 9th.

    On Thursday, June 14th In Our Time will discuss the background to Ulysses, considering its historical and literary context, its themes, contents and style, and the impact it has had since publication. Melvyn Bragg will be joined by Steven Connor, Professor of Modern Literature and Theory at Birkbeck College, London; Jeri Johnson, Fellow and Tutor in English at Exeter College, Oxford; and Richard Brown, Reader in Modern Literature at the University of Leeds.

    4Extra: Blind Date With Bloomsday – another chance to join Peter White on his Bloomsday visit to Dublin, during which he meets some enthusiastic celebrants. Friday, June 15th.

    Posted by Bogus Magusat 11:16 AM3 comments
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  • Some great nation of cannabis ceteceans

    Some great nation of cannabis cetaceans
    by Steven ‘fly agaric 23’ Pratt.

    In following the trajectory of the war on some people who use some drugs, over the last 20 years, I recently noticed a similar situation to that of the (WOSPWUSD) in the plight of those who wish to recognise a cetacean nation, or some rights and freedoms that humans enjoy.

    The strategy for aquiring  a kind of nationhood for Dolphins and Whales reflects, to my mind, the on-going battle between medical Marijuana activists and recognition, officially, of the benefits and culture surrounding Marijuana, effectively reversing the current laws and punishments for members of the cannabis community so that they become endowed with a kind of spirit-hood thing, and enjoy protected freedoms to live a proud and fearless life like other minorities or previously oppressed groups such as women, people of colour, homosexuals and a growing list of animals, vegetables and plants, cannabis people strive for at least equal rights and the pursuit of happiness as a Gorilla would!

    Jane Goddard seems to me to have kickstarted the quest for individual sovereignty through her work with the United Nations (dometicated primates) and her work with Apes (primates). And, as mentioned above, Dr John Lilly with a host of other scientists, thinkers and imaginative activists have outlined what a sovereign nation for cetaceans might look like, why we should have such a thing, and what we can do, collectively to work towards building and maintaining it.

    The cannabis nation also has such outlines and plans, research projects and evidence to put forward their case, but, (rising organ music please) with cannabis there are hundreds of thousands of such data sets pointing towards changes in the forever biased and bloody bigoted laws and punishments handed out to any member of the cannabis nation participating in their non-violent lifestyle e.g; ingesting cannabis in one form or another.

    In both cases, however, I come across a similar set of problems and in my humble opinion– misunderstandings–on behalf of those who fight for such equal rights and government recognition, in the same way other diverse groups are now protected, legalised and left up to their own devices, to the extent that humans are supposed to have irreducible rights based upon finding oneself in a lucky incarnation: that of a sentient human being.

    There are many different angles to the cannabis nation argument, and billions of Angels, based upon the wide strata of human culture, not least coming from the artistic and innovative music community world-wide. Whereas, the cetacean nation arguments usually come from a somewhat small and specialised area of scholarly research, although cargo cults often get on board the Dolphin and Whale boat to nationhood, adding a sometimes humorous, sometimes frustrating glossing to the concept of a cetacean nation. In my opinion, it is the definition and evidence amassed by Dr John Lilly in particular that best describes the case for cetacean rights and nationhood on par with that of human beings. Read him!

    As any reader of Dr John Lilly may know, he also wrote extensively on altered states of consciousness, cognitive liberty and the therapeutic, neuro-psychological uses of some drugs (in particular Ketamine and LSD). As a scientist, however, John did not follow the slightly more popular legalise cannabis, and other drugs battle in the streets, he rebelled through his research and feedback, both amplifying his brilliance and genius. John made tools and maps to help us navigate psychedelic space that maybe more important today than before based on the similarity between navigating psychedelic space (as defined by Lilly) and navigating cyberspace (as defined by Norbert Weiner and Tim Berners Lee). Cyber = to steer, remember?

    Techniques for navigating non-ordinary states of consciousness are very helpful in navigating through the Internet and our hyper-connected futures or science fiction futures as I like to call our multi-dimensional futures.

    I imagine a situation where inner space–the world behind our eyelids and the private space of one’s thoughts–spills out and over into outer-space or the human perceived space-time world, via Internet, social networks, web sites, games, movies, music and cyber-culture: the digital universe.

    Although this may seem a slight digression from the similarities in the process of recognition of both a cetacean nation and a cannabis people’s nation, the result of some carfeul investigation and a little research into non-ordinary states, reflects the descent or accent, depending how you view the idea of the world and reality made and manipulated primarily by language, to high weirdness!

    However, I must add that all this talk of nation-hoods and sovereignty runs contrary to my intuition about how to really solve the big problems of greed driven civilisation, the swelling global village,  and a peaceful cooperative future.

    I recognised that Buckminster Fuller nailed it when he implied that until the sovereign nations have been de-sovereignized (effectively decentralised) we cannot have open world around trade and balanced communication. I agree whole heatedly, although for the purposes of the arguments above I must drop such a notion, for some great nation of cannabis cetaceans.

    –Steve Fly

    Steven James Pratt