Read the caption. This image will “crash” your brain.

• The men chosen to lead China into outer space are often referred to locally as “superhuman beings” — and not just because they train to cross the final frontier. Would-be taikonauts have to meet near impossible standards that are meant to weed out the less-than-flawless. Chinese astronauts cannot suffer from chronic sore throats or runny noses. They mustn’t have food restrictions, strong regional accents, ringworm, cavities or scars. Bad breath, body odor and a snoring problem are all immediate disqualifiers. And if China’s spacemen are expected to satisfy an unlikely string of qualifications, so too are its new spacewomen — with two notable additional criteria. China’s first two female reserve astronauts, selected earlier this month from a pool of 15 female fighter pilots, were required to be wives and mothers.
• The reasoning behind the prerequisite, according to officials, is that spaceflight could potentially harm the women’s fertility. “It’s out of the consideration of being responsible for the female pilots,” Xu Xianrong, director of the PLA’s Clinical Aerospace Medicine Center in Beijing and a member of the selection panel, told the official government news agency Xinhua. “Though there is little evidence on how the space experience will affect the female constitution, we have to be extra cautious, because this is a first for China.” Ensuring that the female astronauts have already reproduced, he said, will guarantee that their family planning is not disrupted. But at least one authority, Zhang Jianqi, former deputy commander of the country’s manned space program, has stated that the requirement stands because married women are more physically and psychologically mature.

• EDMONTON - God confesses to be a convicted criminal who spent five years in prison for trying to smuggle a suitcase of marijuana into Japan.
• He also lives in Edmonton, and, thank God for name changes.
• A college student formerly known as John Paul LaPointe fought the Alberta government to have his moniker changed to God Dieux - and won.

• The images were shocking - and strange. On Tuesday, thousands of Thai protesters splattered buckets of their own blood outside the Prime Minister’s office in Bangkok as a Brahmin priest in flowing white robes lit incense, chanted spells and cast a curse upon the government.
• As theater, it was both effective and mysterious: clips of the blood curse led international news broadcasts, with viewers and analysts bewildered as to what the protesters were trying to achieve. But in Thailand, it was anything but an aberration. Curses, dark rituals and black magic have long been part of the political culture of the country and some of its neighbors. And to some Thai analysts, the strange rite was a rare public revelation of a more covert aspect of the ongoing conflict between the country’s political movements - a war of the supernatural.
• The protesters, known as the Red Shirts for the color they wear, were supporters of fugitive former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup and has fled the country rather than serve a prison term on a corruption conviction. His opponents include the current Democrat-led government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, the military, a rival group of protesters known as the Yellow Shirts and, according to some, Thailand’s monarchy. Thaksin’s followers are comprised largely of the rural poor, and so it was easy to dismiss, as many commentators did, the bloody curse as a desperate act by uneducated farmers. But in Thailand, despite modern commuter Skytrains, gleaming new international airports, and a populace with a passion for the latest IT gadgets, members of all classes regularly pay deference to the supernatural. From hit men getting tattoos they believe will repel bullets, to aristocratic ladies trading stocks on the advice of astrologers, and ministers who pay tens of thousands of dollars for amulets they believe will ward off evil, the unseen is a serious, and potentially lucrative, business.
• Thailand is a nation that prides itself on its Theravada Buddhist heritage. But Buddhism in Thailand is blended with a brew of Hindu, animist, Khmer, pagan and other beliefs. King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the country’s 82-year-old constitutional monarch, spent time as a Buddhist monk but also retains astrologers and Brahmin priests at court, as is tradition. So it’s no wonder that coup plotters, Prime Ministers and lawmakers have frequently consulted fortune-tellers before making important decisions. Performing dark rites to increase one’s power and defeat your adversaries is as pervasive among the political class as bribery and vote buying. Even Thaksin, who became a billionaire from satellite services, computers and telecommunications, once declined to answer a reporter’s question because “Mercury [was] not in the right house.”
• In fact, according to Wassana Namnuan, a Bangkok Post reporter, Thaksin and his opponents have been deeply engaged in black magic battles for dominance of the country for several years. “Both sides have been casting curses and spells upon each other,” says Wassana who has written a book on the subject in Thai called Secrets, Trickery and Camouflage: The Improbable Phenomena. According to Wassana, Thaksin believes he is the reincarnation of a Burmese king who killed many Thais, and so has engaged in elaborate cleansing rituals to wash away the sins of his past lives. While in power, Wassana says Thaksin performed several saiyasat, or black magic rituals, that he hoped would prolong his rule for life. While visiting Burma he sought counsel from a deformed astrologer nicknamed “ET” who is favored by the generals that have kept the country in their iron grip for more than half a century.

I’m not the messiah, says food activist – but his many worshippers do not believe him

• “I started getting emails saying ‘have you heard of Benjamin Creme?’ and ‘are you the world teacher?’” he said. “Then all of a sudden it wasn’t just random internet folk, but also friends saying, ‘Have you seen this?’”
• Their reasoning? Patel’s background and work coincidentally matched a series of prophecies made by an 87-year-old Scottish mystic called Benjamin Creme, the leader of a little-known religious group known as Share International. Because he matched the profile, hundreds of people around the world believed that Patel was the living embodiment of a figure they called Maitreya, the Christ or “the world teacher”…
• There are many elements of his life that tick the prophetic checklist of his worshippers: a flight from India to the UK as a child, growing up in London, a slight stutter, and appearances on TV. But it is his work that puts him most directly in the frame and causes him the most anguish – the very things the followers of Share believe will indicate that their new messiah has arrived…
• While his goal appears to match Share’s vision of worldwide harmony, he says the underlying assumptions it makes are wrong – and possibly even dangerous.
• “What I’m arguing in the book is precisely the opposite of the Maitreya: what we need is various kinds of rebellion and transformations about how private property works,” he said.
• “I don’t think a messiah figure is going to be a terribly good launching point for the kinds of politics I’m talking about – for someone who has very strong anarchist sympathies, this has some fairly deep contradictions in it.”

pieto:

Horror Studies intends to serve the international academic community in the humanities and specifically those scholars interested in horror. Exclusively examining horror, this journal will provide interested professionals with an opportunity to read outstanding scholarship from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including work conceived as interdisciplinary. By expanding the conversation to include specialists concerned with diverse historical periods, varied geography, and a wide variety of expressive media, this journal will inform and stimulate anyone interested in a wider and deeper understanding of horror.

• The mystery of three refugees who jumped to their deaths from a Glasgow tower block took a dramatic turn yesterday when it emerged that one of them had claimed to be a member of the Russian security services and went on to allege that he had uncovered a plot by the Canadian Government to assassinate the Queen.
• Serge Serykh, 43, who, along with his wife and stepson, threw himself off a Glasgow tower block, was convinced that if he was not given asylum in Britain his life would be at risk.
• Last night, as Strathclyde Police pieced together the mysterious tale of Mr Serykh, his blonde-haired wife, thought to be called Tatiana, and his 21-year-old stepson, sources told The Times of the bizarre background to a suicide pact that has shocked Scotland.
• Mr Serykh had been given refugee status in Canada in 2000 and, in a plot that resembles an airport thriller, had offered his skills as an alleged former member of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to the Canadian Government, saying he had evidence of a foreign spy network across the country.
• In November 2007 Canada rejected his application for citizenship and he immediately accused the authorities there of having used mind-altering psychotronic techniques against him.
• He left Canada in late 2007 and went to several European countries, including Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, seeking asylum without success.
• Shortly afterwards, he turned up in the UK and, having applied for asylum, he and his family at first stayed in Brent, North London before moving to Glasgow in autumn 2009. His case for asylum in the UK was based on his belief that because of an alleged deal between Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, and former President Putin of Russia, he would be killed by Canadian security agents if he was returned there. He still had a Canadian passport.
• Reports yesterday suggested the family leapt from the balcony of their flat on Sunday morning either holding hands or joined together by a rope. They apparently used a wardrobe to break through the wire security mesh on the balcony. Last night, when police forensic science tents were removed, all that remained of the incident were three deep indentations in the turf where their bodies landed.

• The first alternate reality to catch my eye was The Race, a project in which Michael Burton envisages humanity embracing the bacteria, viruses and parasites that live on and within our bodies. Instead of fighting a losing battling against drug resistant microbes, Burton’s works suggests we could heed research showing the beneficial effects of many microbes, and modify our bodies to encourage their presence.
• Many of these modifications are nightmarish, but also strangely beautiful. I found an
• image of a hand with multiple, claw-like nails for accommodating soil bacteria particularly disturbing. Similar uneasy feelings were created by a straw mask through which the wearer was supposed to receive saliva-rich licks - and healthy doses of bacteria - from affectionate cows.
• Over in Daisy Ginsberg’s Synthetic Kingdom, it is bacteria that are being transformed, not people. The burgeoning field of synthetic biology is where Ginsberg’s interests lie, and she presents visions of the technology’s potential benefits alongside some more worrying scenarios. Diagrams and illustrations show how manufacturing could be transformed, with microchips and biodegradable plastics grown by microbial factories. Fluorescent kidney stones and a golden colon hint at what might happen if engineered bacteria were to infect our bodies, with beautiful, if fatal, effects.

• Today’s cryonics scientists believe that this future may be a mere 100 years away. Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., the world’s largest cryonics company, charges US $150,000 to freeze and maintain a body and $80,000 for a head, typically paid for with a life insurance policy.
• Ralph Merkle, a nanotechnology expert and a director at Alcor, believes the best approach lies in developing nanorobots that can repair the body at the cellular level before thawing. They would fix or replace diseased and deteriorated tissue as well as the tissue fractures and denatured proteins that result from the freezing process itself. The revival process would, ideally, restore the physiology of dead persons to a pristine level, not only undoing the damage of whatever disease or accident killed them but also enabling them to return smarter and healthier than they ever were in life.
• ”We’re talking about a fundamentally more powerful medical technology than we have today that will continue the evolution of the concepts of life and death,” says Merkle, who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford.
• Before the body is cooled to –196 degrees Celsius (the temperature at which liquid nitrogen becomes a gas), the person’s blood is replaced by a cryoprotective solution that doesn’t freeze at those temperatures. Technically, the body and cryoprotective solution are not frozen but vitrified — that is, they solidify into a glassy substance that’s free of ice crystals and the damage they can cause.
• The first step in the future regeneration process would remove this vitrified liquid, letting physicians use the circulatory system as a series of tunnels through which they could run nanomedical robots, nanomaterials and a removable high-speed fiber-optic network connecting to an external supercomputer.
• ”It takes about 10 to the 25th bits to store the molecular structure of the brain,” says Merkle. ”The processing power to repair the brain alone might be 10 to the 37th; switching operations — the equivalent of 100 million copies of today’s fastest supercomputer running flat out for three years. With Moore’s Law doubling computer power every year, we’ll have that kind of computational power in a single supercomputer in about 26 years,” he adds.
• ”Give it another 10 years and the price will drop from $100 million to $100,000. Somewhere around 2050, that much computational power will be readily available to individuals.” And it doesn’t matter if Moore’s Law slows down, Merkle says: ”A person at the temperature of liquid nitrogen can literally wait centuries.”

Richard Dolan — Radio Interview on UFOs and the National Security State_Part II

• RICHARD DOLAN at the Project Camelot Awake and Aware Conference, 19 September 2009, talking about his important new book: Volume 2 of UFOs and THE NATIONAL SECURITY STATE.
• Richard M. Dolan was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1962. He holds an MA in History from the University of Rochester and a BA in History from Alfred University. He earned a Certificate in Political Theory from Oxford University and was a Rhodes Scholar finalist. Prior to his interest in anomalous phenomena, Dolan studied US Cold War strategy, Soviet history, and international diplomacy.
• UFOs and the National Security State is a historical narrative of the national security dimensions of the UFO phenomenon from 1941 to the present. Included are the records of more than fifty military bases relating to innumerable violations of sensitive airspace by unknown objects, demonstrating that the US military has taken the topic of UFOs seriously indeed.

Skeletonized Oscar

• Here in LA, a skeletonized Oscar-esque statue suddenly appeared atop Runyon Canyon days before the awards show last week. For those who don’t know it, Runyon Canyon is a park in Hollywood that’s very popular with joggers, hikers and dog lovers (dogs can go unleashed and run up the canyon trails).
• No one knows who sculpted the giant Oscar, but clearly there’s a message behind it. Has plastic surgery taken over Hollywood? The world? Is there anything wrong with plastic surgery?

I don’t see it as much as a statement about plastic surgery in the industry, but as a requiem on how mainstream movies are mostly recycled, dead memes with no money going to real artists with new ideas.

uncertaintimes:

Dream Anatomy 

The interior of our bodies is hidden to us. What happens beneath the skin is mysterious, fearful, amazing. In antiquity, the body’s internal structure was the subject of speculation, fantasy, and some study, but there were few efforts to represent it in pictures. The invention of the printing press in the 15th century-and the cascade of print technologies that followed-helped to inspire a new spectacular science of anatomy, and new spectacular visions of the body. Anatomical imagery proliferated, detailed and informative but also whimsical, surreal, beautiful, and grotesque — a dream anatomy that reveals as much about the outer world as it does the inner self.