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MonthMarch 2008

The placebo effect is real apparently even when you know it’s a placebo

March 6, 2008 /

Via kottke.org: The placebo effect is real apparently even when you know it’s a placebo, and, alternately, the possibility exists that cultural expectations of whether a drug works or not may have an effect on how well the drug works:

There are various possible interpretations of this finding: it’s possible, of course, that it was a function of changing research protocols. But one possibility is that the older drug became less effective after new ones were brought in, because of deteriorating medical belief in it.

Via me: Which reminded me if this insightful tidbit on chaos magic, by Mark Defrates:

Chaos Magick focuses on the mechanism of belief, and suggests that the process of belief rather than the object of belief is the critical element in magick.

Go think about that.

Can’t Touch This

March 5, 2008 /

“Italy’s highest appeals court ruled that a 42-year-old workman broke the law by “ostentatiously touching his genitals through his clothing” and must pay a 200 euro fine, the Telegraph reported Friday. The U.K. paper also noted that crotch-grabbing is a common habit among superstitious Italian males, who believe the gesture wards off bad luck. What does the crotch have to do with luck?

It’s the seat of fertility. The crotch grab goes back at least to the pre-Christian Roman era and is closely associated with another superstition called the “evil eye”-the belief that a covetous person can harm you, your children, or your possessions by gazing at you. Cultural anthropologists conjecture that men would try to block such pernicious beams by shielding their genitals, thus protecting their most valued asset: the future fruit of their loins. Over the centuries, the practice shifted. Men covered their generative organs not only to defend against direct malevolence but also in the presence of anything ominous, like a funeral procession.”

(via Salon)

Woman Jailed for Tea-Pot Worshipping

March 5, 2008 /

“A woman has been jailed in Malaysia for joining a “tea-pot worshipping” cult. Kamariah Ali, a 57 year old former teacher, was arrested in 2005 when the government of the Muslim majority country demolished the two storey high sacred tea pot of the Sky Kingdom cult.

For the sect, which emphasised ecumenical dialogue between religions, the tea pot symbolized the purity of water and “love pouring from heaven”. But in Malaysia, despite constitutional guarantees of freedom of worship, born Muslims such as Mrs Ali are forbidden from converting to other religions.”

(via Ananova)

Update: The post is gone, but Here’s a very similar article on the same story

links for 2008-03-05

March 5, 2008 /

Furtive Encounters: Freeman’s UFO encounter and more

March 5, 2008 /

Furtive Labors Publishing is known in underworld circles for its survival manuals for marooned astronauts and motivational tapes for chronic masturbators, Hollow Earth atlases and Luddite manifestos in e-book format, alarmist commentary on end-times prophecies and richly ornamented prose portrayals of grotesque graveyard orgies, Armageddon-heralding holiday greeting cards and bulletins from the front lines of future wars, Black Mass breviaries and forbidden books the perusal of which brings madness, terror and spectral horror.

Ask about our telepathic correspondence courses.
OSOTO-3 raises new and troubling questions

OSOTO, Issue 3 – Featuring an account of Freeman’s UFO encounter on the drive to Esozone 2007, excerpts from the FBI’s Marmaduke file, and a two-page homage to Mark Lombardi involving electronic camouflage of pinball machines in some dilapidated barracks at an abandoned military base on the city’s outskirts. Print edition is out now. E-mail us for more information. Special thanks to our sponsor, Martinez Double-Weight Cinder Blocks. POSTED 22 FEB 08

Furtive Encounters.

Unpublished William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac novel to finally see print

March 5, 2008 /

A novel co-written by Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, two giants of the ‘Beat Generation’ of poets, writers and drug-takers, is to be published for the first time more than 60 years after it was written.

And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, written in 1945, was inspired by an actual killing which led to the arrest of both authors.

The novel draws upon the stabbing in 1944 of a homosexual, David Kammerer, by Lucien Carr, a friend of the duo and another Beat leading light.

Carr served two years after admitting manslaughter, claiming Kammerer had been obsessed with him and had become violent.

Carr confessed to Kerouac and Burroughs, who helped him dispose of the knife but did not go to police. Kerouac was arrested as an accessary to the killing in 1944 and was put in a Bronx jail but he was freed after his girlfriend, Edie Parker, stood bail.

Full Story: Adam Gorightly’s Untamed Dimensions.

The truth about Satanic cults

March 4, 2008 /

One of the delusions that we will clear up at the outset of this expose is the lie that leading Satanist’s do not believe in or truly worship the devil. First of all it should be understood that Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan viewed Satan as a true entity that he truly worshipped before his death. Anton LaVey deceived a lot of people who joined the Church of Satan by claiming that Satan only represented the repressed forces of nature but was not a real entity. In my interviews with former Charles Manson family member Susan Atkins, who is still in prison after being convicted of eight murders, Atkins blew the lid off of Anton’s lie. As a former associate of Anton LaVey’s, who danced for him and spent personal time with him before joining the Manson family, Atkins was privy to conversations with LaVey before he became popular. Atkins told me repeatedly that while LaVey promotes a watered down, palatable form of Satanism to the ignorant masses which he is deceiving, he acknowledged the exact opposite to her and to his inner core of Satanist in the church of Satan. Susan Atkins told me that LaVey told her emphatically while she was in his home that they truly worshipped Satan as a real entity and as the one who began the initial rebellion against God. Atkins also stated:

‘Anton told me that as a Satanist he does believe in the God of the Bible, but he refused to worship him, and made a conscious decision to worship Satan instead.’

Full Story: Jesus-Is-Savior.com.

(Thanks Nick).

The Fantastic in Art and Fiction

March 4, 2008 /

“Sponsored by Cornell University’s Institute for Digital Collections (CIDC) this image-bank provides a visual resource for the study of the Fantastic or of the supernatural in fiction and in art. While the site emerges from a comparative literature course on the topic at Skidmore College, it is also intended to open the door to consideration of some of the constant structures and patterns of fantastic literature, and the problems they raise. In this sense, the materials presented here may find a use among students in a variety of disciplines.

In order to take maximum advantage of the materials in the Cornell collections, it seemed best not to adhere to a strict definition of either the Fantastic or its predecessor, the Marvelous, as these have emerged in literary criticism and theory. It will be useful, nevertheless, to note some general markers which have informed the choices implicit in these pages. In the context of western literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, The Fantastic involves dread, fear and anxiety in the face of phenomena that escape rational explanation, or that reveal the notion of reality to be no more than a construct. A fantastic experience can therefore be likened to the breaking or shattering of a frame. While the literary fantastic is limited to the last 200 years, the Fantastic in art can be construed more broadly. This elasticity allowed us to choose images from works spanning a period from medieval manuscripts and printed incunabulae, to the early twentieth century.”

(The Fantastic in Art and Fiction)

Poveglia Island of Horror

March 4, 2008 /

“Poveglia is a small island floating in the lagoons of Venice. In stark contrast to the beauty of its surroundings, the island is a festering blemish. The waves reluctantly lapping its darkened shores will often carry away the polished remains of human bones. When the first outbreak of bubonic plague swept through Europe, the number of dead and dying in the city of Venice became unbearable. The bodies were piling up, the stench was oppressive, and something had to be done. The local authorities decided to use Poveglia as a dumping ground for the diseased bodies.

The dead were hauled to the island and dumped in large pits or burned on huge bonfires. As the plague tightened its grip, people panicked, and those showing the slightest symptoms of the Black Death were dragged screaming from their homes. These living victims, including children and babies, were taken to the island and thrown into the pits of rotting corpses, where they were left to die in agony. As many as 160,00 tormented bodies were disposed of over the years.”

(via Phunk U)

RIP Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons and Dragons

March 4, 2008 /

Gary Gygax, the creator of Dungeons and Dragons, has died. Jesse Walker writes:

It was Gygax, more than anyone else, who turned Tolkien fandom from a premodern pose into a postmodern, participatory phenomenon: Rather than merely reading about hobbits and elves, fantasy fans could enter Middle Earth themselves and create their own adventures. Granted, most of those adventures tended to sound the same. (If you’ve ever endured a D&Der’s detailed account of how he spent his weekend, you’ll understand what I mean.) But we knew that from the title, right? On one level it’s a liberatory vision, one where anyone can create a world for everyone else to play in. But Gygax gave it a Foucauldian twist: In the end, each of those worlds is still a dungeon.

Obit on CNN.

Obit at Reason.

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