Archive for January, 2006

Didgeridoo Playing Improves Your Sleep

Regular didgeridoo playing reduces snoring and daytime sleepiness, finds a study published online by the British Medical Journal.

Snoring and obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome are common sleep disorders caused by the collapse of the upper airways. Continuous positive airway pressure therapy is effective, but is not suitable for many patients.

Reports of didgeridoo players experiencing reduced daytime sleepiness and snoring after practising, led experts in Switzerland to test the theory that training of the upper airways by didgeridoo playing can improve these disorders.

Full Story: Science Daily.

(via Irreality).

January 30, 2006 2 comments

Richard Linklater interview

He [Dick] got it, because he always had a human character base. He wasn?t about these highfalutin ideas about where consciousness, the world or technology was going. He was like, ?Yeah, people, what are they going to do next?? He knew that at the core of the future, there is always going to be some schlubby guy struggling, trying to get laid, and being frustrated. [Other science fiction writers] create these fantastic worlds where humans have suddenly lost all humor and they?ve become automatons, but Dick always granted everyone their full humanity, and that?s his enduring appeal. His characters are flawed and oh-so-human. When I read Scanner, I intuitively felt that it was probably his most personal work. It felt like he had lived this world, [the characters] felt like every roommate he had and half the roommates I had at a certain time in my life. It felt very familiar, the way you just sort of ?end up? around people. You can see how that house became a kind of crash pad. One group moved out ? his family ? and another group, these ne?er-do-wells, move in. It?s fun for a while, but then it spins out of control.

Full Story: Film Maker Magazine.

(via Robot Wisdom).

January 30, 2006 0 comments

Adam Greenfield at a Daily Show taping

Adam talks about attending a Daily Show taping:

Perks of proximity, mostly: the other night, thanks to the good offices of the AIGA, Nurri and I were invited to a taping of the Daily Show. I’m reasonably fond of Jon Stewart, at least when he’s sharp, but the really interesting thing about our experience was seeing how much funnier the show was in person than it is on TV.

January 29, 2006 0 comments

Not a Crime

not a crime

Not a Crime: “A series of billboards featuring local graffiti artists will be on display for one year in Portland, Oregon.”

January 28, 2006 0 comments

Maybe the rain will stop following me

My arrival in Portland was marked by “torrential downpours.” I’m not sure if I arrived in the beginning or middle of the rain, but it lasted for the first week or so that I was here.

There’s a character in the Hitchhikers series who is rained on constantly, wherever he goes. I’m not so unlucky, but I swear every time I travel, it rains. Even in the most unlikely of places, like Burning Man.

Portland is great. I’m working as a file clerk temporarily while I look for a permanent job. Mark and I just applied for a duplex in northeast Portland, and we’re looking at some other places as well.

we're riding hard and we love filing

Mark, Mike, and I are planning a local microzine. And I’m working on a comic with Danny Chaoflux.

And, wow, it’s a new year.

2005 was an incredible year for me. So much happened I won’t go into it here. It was full of highs and lows and I really got my shit together in a lot of ways.

Last year I tried a experiment on Technoccult based on a blog post from here. Maybe it worked too well. I had hoped for some sort of happy and quirky life, and maybe I got that but Mike Allred has the tendency to do some very dark work, and PWEI has some darker songs like “Wake Up, Time to Die.”

This year I’m saying “fuck it”: I want my life to be written by ME. It’s time to put my money where my mouth is and try writing my own narrative, rather than just trying to edit it. We’ll see what happens. So this year my life is written by me, illustrated by Danny Chaoflux, with a soundtrack by a whole slew of musicians including: Pop Will Eat Itself, Gold Chains, Massive Attack, the Dandy Warhols, and She Wants Revenge. It will be the best year yet.

I decided to try this bit of magic here again instead of Technoccult this year. Technoccult has evolved into a hypersigil, but it still remains in essence a scrapbook. This blog was always started as a personality construction hypersigil, though I didn’t consciously realize what I was doing with it when I started it.

So that’s me. New year, new city, new projects.

What are you up to?

January 28, 2006 1 comment

73% of American teens are actively exploring the occult

LVX23 points out an excellent Sploid article that I missed:

A shocking new study finds that 73 percent of American teens are experimenting with the occult.

[...]

“Teenagers relish experiences and the supernatural world provides fertile ground for their explorations,” the Barna Group report says. “In fact, three-quarters of America?s youth have engaged in at least one type of psychic or witchcraft-related activity, beyond mere media exposure or horoscope usage.”

[...]

More than a third of the surveyed teens have communicated with entities using Ouija boards, another third have studied witchcraft rituals, and 25 percent enjoy role-playing games about sorcery and demonology.

Some are even more serious about the occult: 1 in 10 has taken part in a real s?ance and 1 in 12 has actually cast spells or made magical potions.

[...]

Secular researchers say today’s teenagers just aren’t content to watch or listen to anything without getting involved. Interactive video games, the Internet, iPods, blogs and “fan fiction” have put kids in control of their media, deciding what they’ll take from outside sources and what they’ll invent for themselves — unlike the “couch potatoes” who watch whatever’s on television or the “pew potatoes” who blindly follow the commands of the local preacher.

Full Story: Sploid.

January 28, 2006 8 comments

Which Cutting Edge Magician Are You?

I got Taylor Ellwood, even though I think I’m probably closer to Michael Szul. I have no problem using religious symbology in magic, in fact I have more luck with religious material than pop culture material. Most of my practice is Golden Dawn style QBHL, sigils, and hypersigils.

Quizilla:Which Cutting Edge Magician Are You?

January 28, 2006 5 comments

Podcast update

I’ve fallen behind on podcast updates, here are the latest:

Viking Youth: Hunter S. Thompson Biographer Wayne Ewing .

Viking Youth: Artificial Intelligence with Ken Gumbs .

R.U. Sirius: Burning Man with Larry Harvey .

R.U. Sirius: Evolution Control Committee.

NeoFiles: Evolution Biology with Ronald Bailey.

Sacred Whore: an Orgy of Meta.

January 28, 2006 0 comments

Fungi Photo Dot Com

weird looking mushroom

I think Mac said it well:

I’m not into psychedelics, but I’m amazed at the many fungal forms recorded by photographer/shroom fanatic Taylor Lockwood. There’s something appealingly alien about fungus; much of it looks simultaneously amorphic and architectural, like something glimpsed on the horizon of some far-flung exoplanet.

Fungi Photo dot com

(via Posthuman Blues)

January 24, 2006 0 comments

Lego Tarot

tarot tower card with legos