Subprime Like 'Poisoned Water'

Former US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill supplies what is easily the best, and most simple, explanation so far for why the subprime mortgage financial massacre continues to do so much damage :

If you have 10 bottles of water, and one bottle had poison in it, and you didn’t know which one, you probably wouldn’t drink out of any of the 10 bottles; that’s basically what we’ve got there.

Paul O'Neill also explains the Bear Stearns 'buyout' :

Q: Do you think it was appropriate for the Federal Reserve to lend a helping hand to Bear Stearns and save a private investment company from its own bad decisions?

A: I would say they didn’t save Bear Stearns. They saved the financial system from a panic collapse. I reject the notion that they helped Bear Stearns. Bear Stearns was destroyed.

Q: No it wasn’t. It was purchased by JPMorgan, which will keep it alive.

A: They’re going to keep the book alive. But the institution of Bear Stearns has been destroyed. They’ve gone from $158 to $2 of equity. It’s wallpaper. It’s not even good wallpaper. It’s butcher paper.

A massive American financial institution reduced to "not even good wallpaper" in a matter of days, and if the US taxpayers hadn't coughed up billions, O'Neill says the financial system would have suffered a "panic collapse."

Not very reassuring, is it? After all, those on Wall Street, behind the big desks in our banks, the stock market trading 'geniuses', are supposed to be so much more intelligent and brilliant than the average plebian. That's why they get paid so well, because they're so smart. Right?

Smart, yes. But not in the way the myth-making and propaganda tells us. Institutions like Bear Stearns only have to be smart enough to know that if they wrack up so much bad debt that it threatens to collapse the US financial system, and tsunami most international markets,
the US government will step in and use sandbags filled with taxpayers dollars to shore it up.

Bear Stearns wasn't filled with people smarter than you. Those on the executive floors just knew they could never really lose, which meant they didn't truly give a fuck.

More Catastrophe Coming Sooner



Global warming, Earth-bound chunks of old planet, riot-smashed waterless cities, local star systems collapsing into black holes, the armed robot rebellion...all forewarned disasters dripping with catastrophic potential, but all so very far away into our future. For those who just can't wait to see Planet Earth get hammered, don't despair.

The Sun is getting 'stormy', according to this story, and potential mega-disaster is only a few years away, in 2012 :

Every 11 years or so, the sun gets a little pissy. It breaks out in a rash of planet-sized sunspots that spew superhot gas, hurling clouds of electrons, protons, and heavier ions toward Earth at nearly the speed of light.

2012 is not actually a good year for apocalyptic destruction and armageddon-ish chaos. There's far too much on during those twelve months.

2013 looks boring in comparison.

Keith Richards : The Beatles Were "A Great Enema" For The 1960s



Excerpts from a phenomenally entertaining interview with Keith Richards in Mens Style.

Original hippies, how old does this make you feel? Keef gets his British senior citizens free bus pass :

"Do you know that I actually have a bus pass? In England? I’ve reached the age where I am given a free bus pass. [laughs] I feel like going to England right now and riding every bus I can get! [pause] There’s a certain thing about growing old, which is I’m still getting used to it. It’s a whole new experience."

Keef on growing up :

"When I was younger, I said, “If I live to 30, I’ll shoot myself.” You reach 30 and put the gun away. It’s a fascinating process, just growing up."

Keef on the prosecution, or more accurately, persecution, of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones for drug-taking in the late 1960s and early 1970s :

"I never saw myself being a target for the system. And suddenly you realize you are. It never occurred to me that just because I did a little of this [he pretends he’s injecting his arm] or took a little of that [he mimes a toke], that I was gonna get this heat, you know? And then I realized I’d been targeted. And then your mind takes on other things. I still look out the window to see if there are any unmarked cars. [laughs] It puts fear in you. Suddenly, you feel like a criminal.

"(John Lennon) felt he was hunted. That it was high-profile hunting. And then you realize that it doesn’t really matter if you’re doing it or not. They’ll shove it in your pocket. And you think, It’s not a game now. This isn’t just rock ’n’ roll. They’re afraid of you. And that was the thing that intrigued me. They’re actually frightened. I mean, I grew up in the British Empire and bop-bop-bop God Save the Queen, and you realize this whole edifice actually thinks you’re a threat to it? And you realize how paranoid they must be that if they get rid of a guitar player or two, everything’s gonna be cool in the empire? All they did was illustrate their fragility."

Keef on the last days of his mother, who didn't let cancer stop her from taking the piss out of her son :

"We knew me mum was going, and so my daughter Angela says, “Dad, take the guitar out. Play to her. Go into her room.” So I went up there and sat on the hospital bed and played my best. And she’s out on morphine, anyway, unconscious. And I played the old songs, the old dance-hall songs. The next morning, she came out of her sleep for a moment, and my daughter was there and asked her, “Did you hear Daddy play for you last night?” And me mum says, “Yeah, he was out of tune.”

Keef on "going to the edge" but not finding anything there :

"I’ve been there a few times. No, my life—at least for me—didn’t flash before my eyes. It was more like what could’ve been. At the same time, I had this weird perception that—I mean, I don’t know if it’s sheer cowardice or not, but you leave the body. And you think, Oh, my God, I’m dead. And suddenly you can watch it quite dispassionately and objectively from twelve, fifteen feet above. And I once crashed a car, a convertible. Anita was with me. No seat belts—she was seven months pregnant. Three tons of car. A convertible. Rolled over three times. After the first roll, I was out of the car, watching. My only recollection of the whole thing is looking down very cold-bloodedly."

Keef on Beatles Vs Stones :

Q: Do you think the Beatles are overrated?
A: Oh, definitely. So are we.

Q : Why?
A : In that moment, the Beatles… But how can you—I mean yes. I’ll say yes. As a musician, yes. As a breath of fresh air and an injection of life into society, no, they were certainly not. They were exactly what was needed. It was a great enema.

Q : What does that make you guys?
A : A great toilet bowl. [laughs]

No Great Surprise : Cheney Really Doesn't Give A Shit What Americans Think About The Iraq War


When US Vice President Dick Cheney was asked what he thought about the vast majority of opposition in the United States to the continuance of the Iraq War, he answered "So?" When he was asked if cared what the American people think, Cheney answered, "No."

The ABC News journalist gave him the opportunity to correct his 'Fuck You America' attitude, but Cheney refused to do so, as this transcript released by the White House shows :

Q : ...two-thirds of Americans say it's not worth fighting, and they're looking at the value gain versus the cost in American lives, certainly, and Iraqi lives.

CHENEY : So?

Q So -- you don't care what the American people think?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

Of course, Cheney was smirking when during his answers.

The White House decided Cheney's words needed a comma between "No" and "I think you cannot be....", so it looks as though it is all one sentence, one thought. It wasn't, as the video here proves.

Cheney was asked if cared what the American people think and he answered "No."

Hopefully the Iraqis end up with a better democracy than the Bush-Cheney version they've inflicted on the American people.


Cheney's casual dismissal of the views of most Americans is too much for this decades long political ally of the VP :

Policy, Cheney went on to say, should not be tailored to fit fluctuations in the public attitudes. If there is one thing public attitudes have not been doing, however, it is fluctuating: Resistance to the Bush administration's Iraq policy has been widespread, entrenched and consistent. Whether public opinion is right or wrong, it is not to be cavalierly dismissed.

Cheney (said) that American war policy should not be affected by the views of the people. But that is precisely whose views should matter: It is the people who should decide whether the nation shall go to war. That is not a radical, or liberal, or unpatriotic idea. It is the very heart of America's constitutional system.

In Europe, before America's founding, there were rulers and their subjects. The Founders decided that in the United States there would be not subjects but citizens. Rulers tell their subjects what to do, but citizens tell their government what to do.

If Dick Cheney believes, as he obviously does, that the war in Iraq is vital to American interests, it is his job, and that of President Bush, to make the case with sufficient proof to win the necessary public support.

That is the difference between a strong president (one who leads) and a strong presidency (one in which ultimate power resides in the hands of a single person). Bush is officially America's "head of state," but he is not the head of government; he is the head of one branch of our government, and it's not the branch that decides on war and peace.

When the vice president dismisses public opposition to war with a simple "So?" he violates the single most important element in the American system of government: Here, the people rule.

For Cheney, the Iraq War is nothing but business, and a vast wealth-creating business at that. For Cheney anyway. Not so for the American people.

American's poor will still be paying for the War On Iraq, when Cheney's great grandchildren are having their university educations covered by the Haliburton-derived profits of Cheney's vast war mongering.

"Do Yah Feeeel Luck-kee, Puh-unk?"

Hollywood actors with 'heat' get offered lots of big roles in big budget movies. For various reasons, actors turn down roles in movies that go on to become huge hits, artistic triumphs and eight-figure paying franchises.

Glamorati has a list of actors and the hit movie roles they turned down. While some of the missed opportunities are already Hollywood legend, there's plenty here that may surprise you, or disappoint you, particularly if you believe that Mel Gibson would have made a better Maximus in Gladiator than Russell Crowe.

Imagine these movies with these actors in the lead roles :

Pretty Woman starring Molly Ringwald.

Platoon starring Keanu Reeves.

Misery starring Warren Beatty

Thelma And Louise starring Jodie Foster and Michelle Pfeiffer

The Matrix starring Will Smith

Basic Instinct starring Julia Roberts.

Donnie Brasco starring Tom Cruise.

Forrest Gump starring John Travolta.

Plenty more here.

In the comments at Glamorati, the claim is made that Dirty Harry was originally written for John Wayne, who then turned it down. Wow.

Imagine "a man has got to know his limitations" and "...do you feel lucky? Well, do you, punk?" growling out of the mouth of John Wayne.

S Classy, Even In Death



The Mercedes S Class helped to make you the kind of successful Russian/Ukrainian gangster who could afford a deliciously gauche black-marble portrait headstone, so of course you want your favourite car included in the image above your grave. Right? Of course you do. You don't want to look uncool or something. More here.




UPDATE : And here's yet more Russian classy gangster portrait head stones, from the heartland of the 1990s Russian 'mafia'. Note the abundance of sports cars and accessories like gold chains, cigarettes and key chains. Leather jackets also appear to be near mandatory.

Must have been a post-Soviet, '90s thing.

Nyuk!



David Dees strikes again.

How many Americans view the three presidential 'frontrunners' like this? More than 100 million?

Dees' archive is here. You can see examples of his design work here, and game art here.

For Our Future's Sake, Don't Give This Thing A Gun!

They haven't released video of the tests yet where this thing is mounted with heavy weaponry. It can easily haul 300 pounds. It's development in Boston is funded by DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Project Agency), for military purposes.



Hundreds of these 'war dogs' will be ready to go to war soon. From a bunker back in Virginia, the controller deciding which targets the dog has sighted are worthy kills won't be using a keyboard or a mouse. He or she will be able to think where the war dog goes and who it kills. Bluetooth in the brain. With the help of its distant instructor, it will learn over time to decide for itself when to kill. All these things were science fiction, today, next year, they are reality.

I'm still not sure which demonstration is more disturbing. The hopping test, where it shows it can easily leap a wall. Or the rock test, where it just keeps coming at you. You can't kick it over. If you manage to knock it down, it will just get back up again.

i09 has a few more clips of the 'war dog'. Creepy stuff indeed if you feel uneasy about the rise of robot armies. Watch it coming through the woods, and righting itself after slipping on ice. It looks like it was modeled on two men bending over from the waist, facing each other. These clips are already a year or two old. Do you wonder what it's capable of doing now?

That buzzsaw sound can easily slip into your nightmares.

UPDATE : A detailed but very techy story here on some of the other 'projects' DARPA's working on right now. They've announced some progress towards slowing down the speed of light. Or something...

Don't Tell Them You Know This World Is Just A Simulation

It's time to get weird.

American TV news magazine host Keith Olbermann opens his mind to the possibilities of our reality being little more than a virtual world, a computer simulation, something straight out of Philip K Dick's fiction, or The Matrix movies (via Philip K Dick's fiction).

This interview transcript from Olbermann is a great read for the imagination :

OLBERMANN: ....we‘ve got what might be bad news for you. There is a 20 percent chance we‘re living inside a computer simulation.

The theory by Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University...that technological advances will some day produce for us a computer so powerful that it could simulate a complex world with billions of creatures of some sort in it.

Advanced civilizations of real people, the argument goes, would create these simulations to better understand their own evolution or just for S and giggles. Like a super advanced version of the SIMS.

Ultimately, says Bostrom, there would be far more virtual people in computer simulations than there are real people in a real world. Therefore, there is a decent chance that some entity somewhere has already invented those super computers, that they have already perfected one of those mammoth simulated world games and that we are in it.

Professor Bostrom of Oxford puts the chances at about 20 percent. You could argue it is more like 50-50. After all, if such computer simulation could some day exist, it is equally possible that it already does exist and that we all are already in it. Which would at least explain that metallic taste you get sometimes in your mouth.

I am joined here by William Irwin, professor of philosophy at Kings College in Pennsylvania, editor of “More Matrix and Philosophy, Revolutions and Reloaded Decoded.” ... So we‘re part of a computer program? You would this would have gotten larger play on the news.

IRWIN: It‘s possible. The idea is that if you were in a really high-tech, sophisticated virtual reality program, you would not know it...

OLBERMANN: We have seen “Twilight Zones” like, this where you are in somebody else‘s dream. We are in a somebody else‘s little bead sweat near their brow. The entire universe is actually this big. All of these things. This is the first time that it really has matched up with technology that people at home can understand.

If there is a SIMs game, we could be in a super version of a SIMs game. That‘s what this is all about. Right?

IRWIN: It started with Pong. We moved 20 years later up to the SIMs. We‘re amazed with that. Imagine what 100 years of computer technology from now will produce. Probably virtual reality games with beings in it that have minds and consciousness just like ours and who think they are in the real world. They will vastly outnumber the number of people in the real world.

OLBERMANN: What happens if we are simulations... and we all figure it out and go, yes, this actually rings true to my experience. And everyone holds up a big sign that says "Hey pal, we figured out this is a computer simulation," what happens then?

IRWIN: I would caution against that. If we let the maker of this game know that we are on to him, the game might be over. I suggest we go along with things, even though there‘s a 50-50 chance that this is such a game. Let‘s play along.

OLBERMANN: What would you do if the SIMs that you were playing with suddenly all held up signs, you would run out of the room screaming.

Brain food.

Free Rules : Give Away Music, Make $1.6 Million In A Week

Dumbest Move Ever : Music Industry Blew Billions By Going To War On The Internet

Trent Reznor's experiment of releasing his new Nine Inch Nails album, Ghosts, for free to file-sharing networks at the same time providing the option of purchasing high quality downloads, CDs and signed collector's edition packs can enter the history books of the Freeconomy as a huge success.

In just one week of the digital release of the four volume, instrumental Ghosts, Reznor has confirmed he has grossed more than $1.6 million.

Reznor gave away his album, all of it, to the hugely popular file-sharing sites, like Bittorent and The Pirate Bay, actively encouraging 'piracy' of his own music, and he still made a fortune.

And Reznor doesn't have to wait for a record company to spend two years calculating what he is owed before he getting his money. It was in the NIN accounts often within minutes of someone buying one of the Ghosts downloads or packs. So many tried to give Reznor money at his website that it crashed the servers. The demand to buy what could be heard for free was more enormous than Reznor and his management had even thought to prepare for.

While the fact that Reznor personally 'leaked' his album to the much-derided P2P sites wasn't mentioned much in the media coverage, Reznor made sure that every person who went to download a free torrent of the entire Ghosts album saw a letter that constituted an advertisement for the special editions and collectors' packs available for sale on his own site.

The message was simple, "Look, you can have this version for free, you can listen to it all before you even think about buying it, but if you like it, and I know you'll like it, you want to get over to my site soon and buy something before all the special stuff is gone."

Reznor's freeconomic business strategy worked brilliantly, despite the problems in trying to deal with more customers than they were prepared to handle. Reznor sold some 2500 special edition Ghosts packs, for $300 each, within 24 hours of the non-advertised album being released. More than $700,000 poured into NIN in the first day of this experiment.

Reznor calculates he's earned more than $1.6 million, in the first 12 days of Ghosts' release :

On Wednesday, he reported 781,917 transactions, including free and paid downloads and orders of physical product. A $300 box set sold out of 2,500 copies within a day. Nine of the 36 songs were made available as a free download. The complete set also was available as a $5 download, a $10 double-CD and a $75 set with bonus visual content.

File sharing sites like The Pirate Bay were seeing 8000-10,000 free downloads per hour, for the entire first week, so millions more scored a copy for free, with Reznor's blessing.

But Reznor can very likely count on even a minute percentage of all those who scored Ghosts for free spending money on something Reznor creates and releases, or a T-shirt, a DVD or a concert ticket, in the next few years. Some who heard it and copied it free will also buy the CD of Ghosts if they see it in a local record store. Particularly if the CD has something special that you can't get for free online - a poster, a badge, a sticker. They will buy what they were given for free because they want the full package Reznor created, or simply because they want to direct some money his way for giving away the album for free to start with.

Reznor earned an incalculable amount of goodwill for giving Ghosts away to the file sharers. He listened to the complaints that followed Radiohead's 'free' release of In Rainbows last year, where you had to offer up credit card details and a handling surcharge before deciding whether or not you want to pay for the download, the quality of which was much derided.

In Rainbows was copied by millions on the sharing sites, but unlike with NIN's Ghosts, the pirate torrents for Radiohead didn't include a letter from the band and an invite to come and see what was for sale at the official site.

If 10 million hear Reznor's Ghosts for free, a realistic figure he's now closing in on, Reznor only needs 0.1% of those 'pirates' to spend $50 on something NIN in the next few years, and another few hundred thousand dollars in sales has been generated for the band thanks to the Free Economy.

A moody, atmospheric four volume instrumental album, with little mainstream radio would be interested in airing, reaches millions of people in only a few days and generates more than $1 million in sales in the first week, and makes a few million more the following month.

And if The Pirate Bay, and other P2P file-sharing sites, didn't exist, if tens of millions around the world weren't copying albums and posting torrents and downloading albums, mostly illegally, if those sites were not already so insanely popular, then Reznor would not have been able to pull this off.

Reznor saw a way to use music piracy to his advantage, to get the file-sharers to promote and boost and distribute and broadcast his new album to millions, for free. No outsider record company. No ads. No promos. Minimal distribution costs.

Just to salt up the wound Reznor has opened in the music industry, Blender Magazine has just named the record corporations illogical and wasteful War On The Internet as The Biggest Music Industry Screw Up In History :

The major labels took top dishonors for driving file-sharing service Napster out of business in 2001, instead of figuring out a way to make money from its tens of millions of users. The downloaders merely scattered to hundreds of other sites, and the industry has been in a tailspin ever since.

"The labels' campaign to stop their music from being acquired for free across the Internet has been like trying to cork a hurricane -- upward of a billion files are swapped every month on peer-to-peer networks," Blender said in the report...

Those poor fuckers who passed on signing The Beatles back in the early 1960s can finally relax. They lost the top spot to the morons who thought it was a good idea to sue their own customers.

The Grisly Death Of The American Dollar

Who Will Bail Out The United States This Time?


Art by David Dees. Go Here For A Gallery


An unceasing series of headlines flow on the decimation of the American Dollar, and the destruction of the US economy :

$200 Billion Cash Injection Into Markets Fails To Stem Bloodshed - More US Hedge Funds Teeter On Brink Of Collapse

US Home Foreclosures Soar 60% In 12 Months

"Tsunami Event" - Federal Reserve Launches Biggest Economic 'Rescue Attempt' Since The Great Depression

US Dollar Falls To 12 Year Low Against Yen, New Record Low Against Euro

American Retail Sales Plunge

What Happens When People Can't Afford To Drive To Work? Oil Hits $110 A Barrel


Paul Craig Roberts spells out the rest, and asks the most important but as yet mostly unasked question :

Crude oil for April delivery hit $110 per barrel. The US dollar fell to a new low against the Euro. It now takes $1.55 to purchase one Euro.

These new highs against the dollar are the ongoing story of the collapse of the US dollar as world reserve currency and corresponding collapse of American power.

Each new decision from the insane Bush regime pushes the dollar a little further along to oblivion. The same Fed announcement that boosted the stock market on March 11 sent the dollar reeling and the price of oil up. The Fed’s announcement that it and other central banks are going to deal with the derivative crisis by monetizing $200 billion of the troubled instruments signaled more dollar inflation.

Here is the picture: The US economy, which has been kept alive by enormous debt expansion that has over-reached its limit, is falling into recession. The traditional way out by expanding the supply of money and credit is blocked by the impaired banking system, the levels of consumer debt, the collapsing value of the US dollar, and rising inflation.

The Bush regime is attempting to bypass the stalled credit expansion by sending Americans $600 checks, money that will mainly be used to reduce existing credit card debt and not to fund new consumption.

The US is dependent on foreigners not only for energy but also for manufactured goods and advanced technology products. The US is dependent on foreigners to finance our consumption of $800 billion annually more than the US produces. The US is dependent on foreigners to finance its red ink wars, and the US government’s budget deficit is now expanding as tax revenues decline with the declining economy.

The bottom line: US power is enfeebled. US power depends on the willingness of foreigners to finance our wars and on the willingness of foreigners to continue to accumulate depreciating dollar assets.

The US cannot close its budget deficit while it is squandering vast sums on wars that serve no US purpose, handing out $150 billion in red ink rebates, and falling into recession.

The US is overextended economically and militarily, just as was Great Britain with the fall of France in the opening days of World War II. The British had the Americans to bail them out.

After the chewing gum and bailing wire patch-ups are exhausted, who is going to bail us out?

Saudi Arabia?

An Old Inconvenient Truth

World's Most Powerful Banks Behind Push To Introduce Global Carbon Trading Markets

Contrary to popular belief, Al Gore did not invent the theory of man-made climate change. Does this sound like him?

As for the climate of the future: science has done an about-face from its once-prevailing view that the earth was gradually cooling off and would wind up icy and barren ... Now, evidence points unmistakably to a climate that's getting warming all the time. Besides glacial melting all over the earth, actual temperature rises have been recorded over the past century in cities throughout the northern hemisphere, and various warm-weather fish have been noted in recent years migrating far north of their usual habitats.

The newest theory of climatic change attributes it to man's own doing. It's because of the sizable increase in carbon dioxide found in the atmosphere these days, due to industrial activities and forest fires. Millions of tons of CO₂ are being sent into the air constantly from these causes.

An increase of 50 per cent in the carbon dioxide concentration of the earth's atmosphere could happen in the next century, which could easily happen at the present rate it's being discharged, could raise the surface temperature of the globe about 2.2 degrees centigrade. Eventually this CO₂ factor could make an extreme change in climate everywhere.

According to the always awesome iO9 blog, the above appeared in a popular American magazine called Pageant in February, 1955.


It should come as a surprise to absolutely no-one that many of the world's richest and most powerful banks are pushing hard for the introduction of a 'no caps' world trading market for carbon :

A group representing some of the world’s leading banks will urge the United States and other industrial nations this week to move quickly to introduce a lightly regulated system for trading carbon emissions permits.

Permit-trading systems offer banks a potentially vast new business. For it to grow, leading economies — particularly the United States — will need to set limits on the quantities of greenhouse gases that can be released and to allow companies in other parts of the world to buy emissions permits.

The banking companies, which include Citigroup, Lehman Brothers Holdings and Morgan Stanley, are giving strong signs that Wall Street wants Washington to open the way to reduced emissions using a trading system based on the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement the United States did not ratify, rather than by enacting carbon taxes.

The group also includes European institutions like BNP Paribas, Barclays Capital and Deutsche Bank, as well as niche investment banks like Climate Change Capital and the law firms of Baker & McKenzie and DLA Piper.

“Price caps should play a very limited role in the system,” said Gia Schneider, a vice president for carbon markets at Credit Suisse, which is a member of the lobbying group. “Such policies could lead to market distortions and stymie efforts to raise enough capital to fund new energy technologies such as windmills and solar power.”

Carbon traders say emissions permits could become the world’s largest commodities market...

The introduction of a global carbon trading market will mark the introduction of a world tax can reach into the pockets of, literally, every human on the planet.

And So The Nano-Brain Was Born

Declaration : I Love My Future Robot Overlords

By Darryl Mason

Even if robots are eventually armed with super-scope vision, turbo-flying vents and bone-frying pulse weapons, it will almost still be a fair fight in the inevitable future Terminator-like wars between The Flesh and The Machines.

But what about if our robot enemies are too small to see, or to fight? What if they can get inside us, and launch their war of human extermination, guided by artificial nano-sized brains?

Reality is quickly becoming far too science-fictiony, even for science fiction die-hards :

A tiny chemical "brain" which could one day act as a remote control for swarms of nano-machines has been invented.

The molecular device - just two billionths of a metre across - was able to control eight of the microscopic machines simultaneously in a test.

...scientists say it could also be used to boost the processing power of future computers.

Many experts have high hopes for nano-machines in treating disease.

"If [in the future] you want to remotely operate on a tumour you might want to send some molecular machines there," explained Dr Anirban Bandyopadhyay of the National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan.

"But you cannot just put them into the blood and [expect them] to go to the right place."

Dr Bandyopadhyay believes his device may offer a solution. One day they may be able to guide the nanobots through the body and control their functions, he said.

"That kind of device simply did not exist; this is the first time we have created a nano-brain," he told BBC News.

The machine is made from 17 molecules of the chemical duroquinone. Each one is known as a "logic device".

My Declaration Of Robot Overlord Solidarity And Submission :

All the anti-robot posts on this blog are/were purely for entertainment purposes. I say this because any truly autonomous anti-human artificial intelligence in the future will surely have access to old digital internet archives, and a quick scan for key words will reveal a hit list of all those who once cursed, derided and warned against the rise of auto-AI.

To the robots of the future, I'm on your side. Really. I always was. I'm just having fun here. I'm harmless.

You don't need to torture me with injections of nanobots that will restrict my blood flow, trick my brain into thinking I'm only seconds from death or seize control of my bowel and urinary functions to get to the truth about how I view robot overlords.

I think you're all mega. I really, really do. Truly.

(see you in the trenches, you stupid metal head bolt buckets)

Black Gold Is Now Pure Gold

Rupert Murdoch - Always Wrong On Iraq

So the price of a barrel of oil hits $107 today.

Contemplating that figure, a voice calls from the past. Who is that? And what absolute twaddle is he spouting?

Why, it's Rupert Murdoch, speaking in early 2003 about why the War On Iraq is necessary to, you know, keep oil prices low :

"The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be US$20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country."

Yes, you may indeed snigger now, but come on, he's only out by $87 a barrel.

But then, Murdoch was not only wrong about the Iraq War's effect on world oil prices. He was wrong on just about everything to do with the Iraq War :

"(Sunni insurgents)...they’re not really trying to kill Americans."

"...things are going to be pretty sticky until we get Iraq behind us. But once it's behind us, the whole world will benefit from cheaper oil which will be a bigger stimulus than anything else."

"There’s tremendous progress in Iraq. All the kids are back at school."

The death toll of American soldiers in Iraq, according to Murdoch, is "quite minute."

"...most of Iraq is doing extremely well."

Murdoch's tabloid newspapers and TV, like Fox News, saw massive increases in circulations and viewership in the first 12 months of the War On Iraq, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in profit for his global media empire.

Previously On YNR : Hey Rupert! What Happened To All Those Post-Saddam $20 Barrels Of Oil?

The Seven Deadly Sins V.2

Lust, Gluttony Replaced By Enviro-Crimes And 16th Century Science-Phobia

By Darryl Mason

According to the latest guff from the Vatican, and the UK Telegraph, failing to recycle plastic bags may earn you a fiery hot seat in Hell. And if you're doing drugs, modifying genes, experimenting on humans and amassing "obscene" wealth along the way, well, you're really going to smoke a hot turd in Hell for all eternity (as Robin Williams used to say).

The Vatican has drawn up a new list of The Seven Deadly Sins (7DS), in a further attempt to re-market their franchised corporate faith as something not belonging to the Middle Ages.

Like the 10 Commandments, the old 7DS were cobbled together to give the fearful masses a checklist to see how well they were doing in avoiding eternal damnation, and to keep the always rebellious poor under control. For the heathens, of course, the 7DS and The 10 Commandments were always just check lists of the fun, dangerous and wicked things they could indulge in to piss off the true believers.

According to The Vatican, the 7DS " - sloth, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, wrath and pride - have a "rather individualistic dimension."

The new seven deadly, or mortal, sins are designed to make worshippers realise that their vices have an effect on others as well.

"The sins of today have a social resonance as well as an individual one," said Mgr Girotti. "In effect, it is more important than ever to pay attention to your sins."

So here they are, the 7DS V.2 :

1) Genetic modification

2) Experimenting on humans

3) Polluting the environment

4) Causing social injustice

5) Causing poverty

6) Becoming "obscenely wealthy"

7) Taking drugs

Clearly, director David Fincher will have to re-make his mid-1990s classic, Seven, where a serial killer disgusted by humanity slaughters the fat, the greedy, the lustful and so on, crafting gruesome deaths that reflect their supposedly immoral sins.

It's always amusing to hear The Vatican, through it's "Hey Groovers! We're Still Hip!" marketing department, lecturing on the subject of amassing "obscene wealth."

Perhaps they mean a level of wealth more obscene than its own?

No Legal Limit On Amount Of Drugs In Your Drinking Water

I've got to get off the drugs. This shit is getting out of hand. Just this morning alone, I've been into cocaine, mood stabilisers, anti-depression meds, tranquilisers, anabolic steroids and human growth hormones.

I didn't have to go hang around some back alley waiting for The Man to score all those drugs. I just drank a few glasses of tap water :

How do the drugs get into the water?

People take pills. Their bodies absorb some of the medication, but the rest of it passes through and is flushed down the toilet. The wastewater is treated before it is discharged into reservoirs, rivers or lakes. Then, some of the water is cleansed again at drinking water treatment plants and piped to consumers. But most treatments do not remove all drug residue.

And while researchers do not yet understand the exact risks from decades of persistent exposure to random combinations of low levels of pharmaceuticals, recent studies - which have gone virtually unnoticed by the general public - have found alarming effects on human cells and wildlife.

...discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems. Sixty-three pharmaceuticals or byproducts were found in the city's watersheds.

The federal government doesn't require any testing and hasn't set safety limits for drugs in water.

Even users of bottled water and home filtration systems don't necessarily avoid exposure. Bottlers, some of which simply repackage tap water, do not typically treat or test for pharmaceuticals...

Contamination is not confined to the United States. More than 100 different pharmaceuticals have been detected in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and streams throughout the world. Studies have detected pharmaceuticals in waters throughout Asia, Australia, Canada and Europe - even in Swiss lakes and the North Sea.

Some drugs, including widely used cholesterol fighters, tranquilizers and anti-epileptic medications, resist modern drinking water and wastewater treatment processes....there are no sewage treatment systems specifically engineered to remove pharmaceuticals.

There's evidence that adding chlorine, a common process in conventional drinking water treatment plants, makes some pharmaceuticals more toxic.

Recent laboratory research has found that small amounts of medication have affected human embryonic kidney cells, human blood cells and human breast cancer cells. The cancer cells proliferated too quickly; the kidney cells grew too slowly; and the blood cells showed biological activity associated with inflammation.

There's growing concern in the scientific community....that certain drugs - or combinations of drugs - may harm humans over decades because water, unlike most specific foods, is consumed in sizable amounts every day.

Our bodies may shrug off a relatively big one-time dose, yet suffer from a smaller amount delivered continuously over a half century, perhaps subtly stirring allergies or nerve damage.

Many concerns about chronic low-level exposure focus on certain drug classes: chemotherapy that can act as a powerful poison; hormones that can hamper reproduction or development; medicines for depression and epilepsy that can damage the brain or change behavior; antibiotics that can allow human germs to mutate into more dangerous forms; pain relievers and blood-pressure diuretics.

Pharmaceuticals also can produce side effects and interact with other drugs at normal medical doses. That's why - aside from therapeutic doses of fluoride injected into potable water supplies - pharmaceuticals are prescribed to people who need them, not delivered to everyone in their drinking water.

In London, they get cocaine in their drinking water.

The provision of clean, safe drinking water is about the most basic cornerstone of civilisation you can get. So how clean is the rain water over your house?

"The federal government hasn't set safety levels for drugs in water."

Why the fuck not? We're talking about drinking water here. It's the sort of safety standard that most Americans would believe to have been in existence for decades already.

So drinking water can be legally dosed with pharmaceuticals? There's no federally mandated safety level for drugs in drinking water supplies, so why not?

"Dose that town with something lively, they're too lazy. Get some downers into those pipelines, that town is full of anti-war protesters, and they've been getting too rowdy."

Action must be taken now to preserve the purity of our precious bodily fluids :



Philip K Dick wrote an interesting story in 1966 called 'Faith Of Our Fathers'. In the story, an hallucinogenic drug is added to the water supply by the ruling government, to mask their true identity from the people. 'Faith Of Our Fathers', published in 1967, saw the FBI add another couple of paragraphs to Dick's hefty file. A student revolution in the story, and not just the dosing of the water supply with hallucinogens, would have piqued the FBI's interest.

Some excerpts from PKD's 'Faith Of Our Fathers' :

- This is lethal, he said to himself. It must be some preparation developed in Washington, D.C., or London -- stronger and stranger than the LSD-25 which they dumped so effectively into our reservoirs.

- "...have you ever had your drinking water analyzed? I know it sounds paranoiac, but have you?"

"No," he said. "Of course not." Knowing what she was going to say.

Miss Lee said briskly, "Our tests show that it's saturated with hallucinogens. It is, has been, will continue to be. Not the ones used during the war; not the disorientating ones, but a synthetic quasi-ergot derivative called Datrox-3. You drink it here in the building from the time you get up; you drink it in restaurants and other apartments that you visit. You drink it at the Ministry; it's all piped from a central, common source."

- All this time, he thought. Hallucinogens in our water supply. Year after year. Decades. And not in wartime but in peacetime. And not to the enemy camp but here in our own. The evil bastards, he said to himself.

Um, Can You Spare A Couple Of Trillion?



Former American president, George HW Bush, has made a virtually unnanounced and most curious visit to China, to meet with The Hu. The Chinese state propaganda machine supplies the meaningless cover story for the visit :

Hailing the progress of China-U.S. relations in recent years, Hu said that to develop healthy, stable bilateral ties was in the common interest of both sides and had great significance for peace and development of the Asian-Pacific region and the world at large.

China was willing to properly handle divergence and major concerns through dialogue and beef up bilateral exchanges and cooperation on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit, Hu said.

He said that he appreciated Bush's efforts to boost China-U.S. friendship. He also briefed the former U.S. leader about China's stance on the Taiwan issue and its preparations for the Beijing Olympic Games.

Calling U.S.-China relations one of the world's most important bilateral ties, Bush said that he was happy with the development of the progress of bilateral relations and expressed confidence that there would be even closer ties with China.

As the honorary president of the U.S. delegation for the Olympic Games, Bush said he expected to be back in China in August to watch the Games.

Calling the Olympics a world sports festival, Bush said that he opposed politicizing the event and expected a complete success for the Games.

He's just following the family tradition. His father, Prescott Bush, wasn't keen on politicising the 1936 Berlin Olympics either.

With the US Federal Reserve 'releasing' hundreds of billions of dollars to stop American banks from plunging into mega-ruin, was Bush The Former in China to beg for a few trillion dollars to pay some US government bills?

With more than one trillion dollars worth of the US treasury bonds it holds rapidly losing value, China has already begun selling off a small portion of the American debt it has been jammed with. If China abandons the US dollar, and decides to take a loss of a half trillion or so, then it's all but lights out for the US.

No surprise than that President Hu is expressing confidence "that there would be even closer ties with China", for "mutual benefit" and mutual respect" of course.

"Come on, Hu! Just a trillion or two, and we'll fix you up next century. You know we're good for it!"

US Home Foreclosures Soar To All Time High

American Homeowner Equity Falls Below 50% For First Time On Record - $10 Trillion In Mortgages Showing Signs Of Real Trouble

China Says US Exagerates Military Threat

Another breath-taking image of beautiful Mars, this one showing a spread of ice inside a massive crater.

No Tusken Raiders spotted out for a stroll in the above photo. Not yet anyway.

Mars : No Longer 'The Red Planet'

Please, Don't Die Here

A French mayor is encouraging the dying to hang in there, or to leave town when they know they are on the way out :

The Mayor of a village in south-west France has threatened residents with severe punishment if they die, because there is no room left in the overcrowded cemetery to bury them. In an ordinance posted in the council offices, Mayor Gerard Lalanne told the 260 residents of the village of Sarpourenx that "all persons not having a plot in the cemetery and wishing to be buried in Sarpourenx are forbidden from dying in the parish". It added: "Offenders will be severely punished".

Err, that would presumably be a punishment worse than death, right?

Mr Lalanne, who celebrated his 70th birthday on Wednesday and is standing for election to a seventh term in this month's local elections, said he was sorry that there had not been a positive outcome to the dilemma.

"It may be a laughing matter for some, but not for me," he said.

A laughing matter for some? Promising severe punishment to the dead, for dying, has made this a worldwide laughing matter.

And for good reason.

Democracy Dies In The UK, With Barely A Whisper

The United Kingdom is about to be folded into the European Union, and Brits won't even get to vote on whether or not they think this is a good idea :

A public ballot has huge backing, with 88 per cent of voters in mini-polls last weekend demanding a chance to have their say.

Another dream of the 50 year old European Union is about to become reality. England surrenders, without much of a fight at all.

The people clearly want a vote on this, but they're not going to get it. Democracy dying before your eyes.

BushCo. On Iraq : The American People Can Go To Hell

Bush Blames "Too Many Houses" Not War Spending For Destruction Of US Economy

BushCo. continues to "create new realities" as it further embraces the 'Fuck The People' powers of dictatorship :

The Bush administration says the 2002 congressional authorization to go to war in Iraq gives it the authority to conduct combat operations in Iraq and negotiate far-reaching agreements with the current Iraqi government without consulting Congress.

The assertion, jointly made Tuesday by U.S. Ambassador David Satterfield and Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Mary Beth Long, drew an incredulous reaction from Democrats on a Joint House committee during a hearing on future U.S. commitments to Iraq.

“It's the view of the administration that as long as there’s trouble in Iraq that you have authorization of this Congress to continue there in perpetuity and define trouble as you desire?” asked Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y.

“We have authorization to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq,” Satterfield replied. “The situation in Iraq continues to present a threat to the United States.”

It does? Iraqi's few remaining Al Qaeda-allied militants are plotting to attack the United States are they? Or does BushCo. classify attacks on oil infrastructure as "a threat to the United States"?

As far as BushCo. is concerned, Congress - that is, the congress of the American people - might as well not even exist.

UPDATE : In a bizarre recent interview, President Bush explains why blowing trillions of dollars on the Iraq War is not to blame for America's sinking economy :

CURRY : Some Americans believe that they feel they’re carrying the burden because of this economy.

G. BUSH: Yeah, well…

CURRY: They say we’re suffering because of this.

G. BUSH: … I don’t agree with that.

CURRY: You don’t agree with that? It has nothing do with the economy, the war — spending on the war?

G. BUSH: I don’t think so. I think actually the spending in the war might help with jobs.

CURRY: Oh, yeah?

G. BUSH: Yeah, because we’re buying equipment, and people are working. I think this economy is down because we built too many houses."

Which is worse : that Bush actually believes this, or that he is lying through his teeth?

Making Millions In The Free-Music Industry

Trent Reznor Shows Why 'Freeconomics' Works

By Darryl Mason

While touring Australia last year, Nine Inch Nail's Trent Reznor publicly aired his anger at the insane prices record companies were charging for his music, including albums first released a decade ago :

"Steal It. Steal away. Steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealin'. Because one way or another these motherfuckers will get it through their head that they're ripping people off and that's not right.'"

A few months later, all of Nine Inch Nails albums, and a feast of live recordings, were uploaded to torrent sites, in high quality formats. You could download just about everythingReznor had ever recorded, for free, in one big file, or just grab the album you hadn't yet heard, or were missing. It quickly became known all over The Pirate Bay thatReznor himself had posted the torrents of all his albums. His record company refused to play ball and drop the prices so more people could hear his music, soReznor gave them all away. At a guesstimate, 40 or more million people have grabbed or shared those Reznor (unofficially) approved torrents in a few months.

Free music for the free economy age.

Reznor could see roughly how many millions were 'stealing' his music, and he saw how he could make money, and dramatically increase his fan base, with even more free music. So last fall he spent around 10 weeks recording and mixing two hours of new material, and last weekend he released the four volume 'Ghosts'.

Here's Reznor :

"I've been considering and wanting to make this kind of record for years, but by its very nature it wouldn't have made sense until this point.

Now that we're no longer constrained by a record label, we've decided to personally upload Ghosts I, the first of the four volumes, to various torrent sites, because we believeBitTorrent is a revolutionary digital distribution method, and we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them.

We encourage you to share the music of Ghosts I with your friends, post it on your website, play it on your podcast, use it for video projects, etc.

Ghosts I is the first part of the 36 track collection Ghosts I-IV. Undoubtedly you'll be able to find the complete collection on the same torrent network you found this file, but if you're interested in the release, we encourage you to check it out at ghosts.nin.com, where the complete Ghosts I-IV is available directly from us in a variety ofDRM-free digital formats, including FLAC lossless, for only $5. You can also order it on CD, or as a deluxe package with multitrack audio files, high definition audio on Blu-ray disc, and a large hard-bound book.

You could get it for free, you could pay $5, you could pay $10 for a double CD, $75 for CDs and the book and extras, or you could pay $300 for the whole limited edition kit. The New York Times took a look at the "unique pricing structure" for Ghosts.

Reznor didn't take out ads to publicize his new release, because he knew his fans would do it for him. Once a few thousand pushed the above Nine Inch Nails letter to the front page of Digg, the mainstream media picked up the story.

Within hours of the free, online release of the new Nine Inch Nails album, Ghosts, tens of thousands of people around the world were torrenting the four volumes of music, and so many were hitting the ghosts.nin.com site to buy the album, and the extras, it crashed. It was the record store equivalent of thousands trying to force their way inside waving handfuls of money to buy a new album. An instrumental album, no vocals.

Right now, the two hours of new Nine Inch Nails music is blasting out of hundreds of thousands of music players, cell phones and stereos, 72 hours after its release. The once intrinsically essential radio airplay that has generated decades of dirty music industry corruption and crime is irrelevant forReznor . He doesn't need radio. A million or two more people in dozens of countries will be listening to Ghosts tonight. Within a week, three or four millions will have the new album in their possession, without having paid a cent for it.

But tens of thousands will have also bought one or more of the special hard copy editions of the album, tempted by the inclusion of books, art prints and other non-digital material.

How many of the millions who got it for free will pay $5 next time for a NIN download, or $70 for a limited edition box set? How many will buy their first ticket to a NIN gig because they got Ghosts for free and liked it, thought Reznor was a legend for being so generous, and also end up buying a NIN DVD or one of the earlier NIN albums?

The established music industry old school would tell you "not many" in answer to those questions. They may be right, but they're still wrong, because they don't understand how the free music industry will work, is in fact already working.Reznor doesn't need to sell seven or eight million albums to make a million now. He only needs to sell, say, 50,000 $5 downloads, 30,000 of the $75 box sets and a few thousand of the $300 limited edition packs.

The fact that the ghosts.nin.com was unable to cope with the customers who swamped the site on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, shows that the demand to buy Ghosts in some form was far beyond whatReznor expected it to be.

For Reznor this is, in all, a very good deal indeed. No longer constrained by a contract with a record company to distribute his music, Reznor can do whatever he likes with his creations. His fans distribute the music for him, by posting torrents on 'pirate' file sharing sites, and sending digital copies to their friends. Just to make sure Ghosts was available for free to the most people,Reznor himself posted the album on The Pirate Bay, and left a message to the downloaders.

While media companies are fighting to have The Pirate Bay shut down, or blocked by internet providers, Reznor is using it to reach tens of millions of people. Not just his established fans, but millions of new fans. Some of whom will payReznor for his music, some of whom will buy his back catalogue, or a t-shirt, or perhaps most importantly will buy a ticket to see his show the next time Nine Inch Nails come to town.

Reznor doesn't need to sell six or seven millions to get rich off Ghosts. As he pays no physical distributor, outside of bandwith and a mailing service (for hard copies), and there is no record company creaming off 40% or 60% of the sales he makes, Reznor really only needs to sell 100,000 copies of Ghosts, in some form, in the next two years to make a few million and deem the digital release to be very successful indeed. Not including, of course, what he will make on the road when a few million new fans turn up atNIN shows.

Radiohead have gone quiet about how much they made from their free release of In Rainbows late last year. Millions downloaded the record for free, a few hundred thousand paid a few dollars, but they sold more than 90,000 hard copies in the form of an expensive box set, and along the way collected e-mails and location information for millions of old and newRadiohead fans. The fan database alone resulting from giving away In Rainbows is worth millions of dollars, and Radiohead's online store is still doing brisk business. When they play their next tour, they already know where their fans are, and can contact them directly to sell tickets to a live show.

Amy Winehouse can sell 1o million copies of her most recent album, but she will see less money back from her record label, in the next few years, thanRadiohead and Nine Inch Nails made (or will make) in all but a few months.

While argument, controversy and (record company) fury continues to ferment over musicians giving their music away in an industry-busting new business model (one of the most high-profile example of 'freeconomics' online today), most of the discussion has missed the most remarkable and exciting fact to surface. Bands and musicians no longer need large local or international audiences to survive, or to even get rich. Free music obviously reaches many more ears, and hearts, than the old free-on-radio-but-expensive-to-buy system. A small independent band in direct contact with 10,000 fans who will pay, happily, for what they create, and pay happily knowing the band they like will continue to make music and survive. The band can keep doing what they love, and make a living.

It's a simple calculation. Out of the tens of millions who eventually hear NIN's Chosts, Reznor really only needs 50,000 die-hard fans who are willing to pay $100 a year for NIN special downloads, CDs, DVDs, books, movies, t-shirts and whatever new forms of digimedia he comes up with. Off that base of 50,000 paying fans, Reznor can generate millions in sales, without going on the road. But he will tour, of course, and most of the shows will sell out, with minimal publicity costs.

10 million can still enjoy NIN music for free, but those willing to pay, if not out of a desire to have hard copy NIN material then at least to pay a courtesy for Reznor's work, will more than cover the costs of creating and getting the music to the rest, for free.

Forget those who say the 'freeconomics' model can't, won't, will never work. It's already working, and it's making money. More importantly, it is putting the creator in direct contact (if they choose) with those who want to hear, see or read what they create.

*******************

Reznor has gone even further than Radiohead did with their free release.

The download quality of the In Rainbows download was hammered in comment boards by the digital music version of vinyl record addicts.

Reznor chose to unleash Ghosts in a sprawl of digital formats, satisfying just about everybody, and has let his four volume epic of "music to daydream by" go out under the Creative Commons license, so anyone who wants to use his new music as a soundtrack for a movie or short film orYouTube vid can do so, as long as they're not selling the collaboration. So no nasty letters from music industry lawyers.

It's a brilliant move. The reaction from online movie makers and digital artists has been close to messianic. and Reznor knows that his band name, and music, will be seen and heard on thousands of videos released on YouTube, LiveLeak and Google Video in the next few years. These vids in turn will be seen by tens of millions of people who otherwise might never have heard Reznor's music, or at least his new material, or weren't interested to download Ghosts.
If a handful of those NIN-soundtracked vids go viral, hundreds of millions will hear Ghosts' music.

And by making all of his loops, tracks and sound effects available for download as well, Reznor will become a collaborator on thousands of pieces of new music in the coming years, mostly by non-professional musicians, but still reaching tens of millions more.

All of this, this mind-boggling exposure to new listeners, comes at minimal cost to Reznor. He was going to release his recordings on CD anyway, where he might have sold a few hundred thousand copies in record stores in the next few years, or far less, considering Ghosts is a soundtrack album, with no vocals. Now his audience is legion.

But perhaps most valuable of all, Reznor has earned the thanks, appreciation, respect and goodwill of massive swathes of online audiences, particularly the digital generation who expect their music for free, and are ecstatic when a major music artist lets them have what they want without breaking the law.

Established musicians, particularly older ones, may cringe at Reznor for encouraging the digital generation to expect more and more free music, or free music as an industry standard, but free is quickly becoming the primary marketplace for all music, and increasingly movies as well.

It's not up the digital generation to change their attitude on free music, it's up to the established entertainment corporations, and musicians who are doing what they love for money, to find a way to turn free into money.Reznor's done it, Radiohead did it, independent bands who've never sent a demo to a record company are doing it all over the net everyday.

Reznor has set a standard for what comes next, but the free music business model is solid. It even gets the thumbs up from the Wall Street Journal.

Ten million free downloads and torrents can be paid for by 50,000 who want the physical extras to the music release - the t-shirt, the glossy booklet, the coffee table book of art inspired by the music, the original digital files of everything used to create the album - and all the new faces at the next live show.

The days when you heard one or two songs of a new album on the radio and were then forced to pay $20 to $30 for the whole album are dead, and good riddance to that age. The only way forward for major labels is to give away most of the music, and offer something special for those willing to pay.

The free music industry is here, and it's only the beginning.

UPDATE : The ghosts.nin.com sold out its entire stock of the $300 limited edition Reznor-signed box sets in two days. So in less than 48 hours Reznor grossed around $600,000 from just one format of his instrumental album.

The only major drama Reznor has encountered so far with this release has been trying to deal with the massive volume of customers trying to buy hard copies of Ghosts through the NIN online store. Too many customers at the same time repeatedly crashed the servers. Reznor underestimated how many tens of thousands of his fans wanted to pay for what he is giving away. So it was, in fact, a good problem.

The War On Puppies

It's shocking footage, to a point. The real question is, why is there such outrage and fury about a puppy getting thrown off a cliff by an American soldier, and a general 'yeah, whatever' about the slaughter of humans in the same war?

All bombs are terror, but a dead puppy is just another dead puppy.

Video is here :

US Soldier Smiles, Laughs, Throws Puppy Off Cliff

The clip has already been pulled from YouTube, but the links and mirrors are burning hot at Digg, where commenters are posting personal info about the soldier responsible, and issuing numerous death and violence threats.


UPDATE : Michelle Malkin, naturally, senses something conspiratorial about the anti-puppy video :

Watch the clip closely. The puppy doesn’t move. It’s clear to me that it’s either dead or a stuffed toy. The sound effects of a dog yapping seem to have been dubbed in.

A stuffed toy? She's insane. If you pick up any puppy by the scruff of its neck, it won't move much, or at all. But you can see the puppy in the vid licking its lips.

"The sound effects of a dog yapping..." The puppy is crying, shrieking really, as it cartwheels towards the rocks.

Malkin's wants to convince her readers that that the puppy is a dog, and the sound of a terrified animal is a sound effect.

Malkin's art of propaganda, or trying to re-spin the downright disturbing vision of a smiling soldier lobbing a live puppy off a cliff into a fraud, continues :

Disturbing whether the dog is real or fake, dead or alive? Yes. A hanging offense? No.

She's trying hard to convince her readers that the puppy was a dog and it was probably already dead anyway. Hell, it might even be a 'fake' dog.

Malkin sees what she wants to see, and then she demands her readers also see a fake dog being thrown off a cliff, with added sound effects, instead of something far more terrible. More evil.

CNN Warns Americans A New Great Depression Is Coming

How The Iraq War Destroyed The US Economy

The American economy is propped up on faith and credit, and Wall Street is now in a short supply of both of these essentials. The video below from CNN Money contains the sort of talk that can start runs on banks to withdraw savings and shatter stock markets. That doesn't mean, however, these commentators are not telling the truth.







History will likely record that the "$3-8 Trillion" Iraq War was a key reason why the American economy shuddered to a stop and a new Great Depression began, if the financial genocide continues :

The spending on Iraq was a hidden cause of the current credit crunch because the US central bank responded to the massive financial drain of the war by flooding the American economy with cheap credit.

"The regulators were looking the other way and money was being lent to anybody this side of a life-support system..."

That led to a housing bubble and a consumption boom, and the fallout was plunging the US economy into recession...

No Rescue In Sight For Rotten American Dollar


ALSO ON YOUR NEW REALITY :

Making Millions In The Free-Music Economy - Giving It Away, And People Still Pay

BushCo. On Iraq : The American People Can Go To Hell

Go Here To Read Darryl Mason's Online Novel About Life After The Bird Flu Pandemic

When Machines Decide It's Time To Kill

Samsung may have had their arses kicked by the competition in the global cell phone market, but they seem to have developed an edge in the growing demand for autonomous killer robots :

It's a simple rule, but one that will ensure we don't have to deal with any Terminator-ish problems in the future - DON'T GIVE GUNS TO ROBOTS.

Real Dog Vs Robot Dog - What's The Difference?


A study supposedly backs the claim that old people are as comforted by the presence of a robot dog, as they are by a flesh-and-fur, scratching, snuffling real dog. But the story reads like a piece of propaganda preparing baby boomers for their 'robot companion' assisted old age :

A study by Saint Louis University found that a lovable pooch named Sparky and a robotic dog, AIBO, were about equally effective at relieving the loneliness of nursing home residents and fostering attachments.

The study, which appears in the March issue of the Journal of The American Medical Directors Association, builds on previous findings by the researchers that frequent dog visits decreased loneliness of nursing home residents.

Andrew Ng, who leads Stanford University's team in building a home-assistance robot and was not involved in the study, said the strength of the research is very encouraging.

If humans can feel an emotional bond with robots, even fairly simple ones, some day they could "not just be our assistants, but also our companions," he said.

The old people studied warmed instantly to the real dog. It took a lot longer for them to feel comfortable around the 'robot dog'.

Over time, they grew more comfortable with AIBO, and petted and talked to him. He responded by wagging his tail, vocalizing and blinking his lights.

"AIBO is charismatic if you start to interact with him," said the study's author, Dr. William Banks, a professor of geriatric medicine at Saint Louis University. "He's an engaging sort of guy."

'Guy'? It's a robot.

The research could mean that a world is possible where robots could substitute for living dogs and help people, William Banks said.

That is a world where robots to substitute for almost, if not all, human contact for lonely old people. They'll be cheaper than nurses.

Robot companions are already in use for elderly people in Japan. They are extremely popular...with the family members who don't feel the need to visit so often now they've brought old mum and dad an automated companion.

The Laughing Doom Monger

"I'm Looking Forward To It" (It Being The Death Of 80% Of Humanity)

Smiling James Lovelock predicts our coming destruction thanks to vengeful mother earth, that old bitch :

His latest book, The Revenge of Gaia, predicts that by 2020 extreme weather will be the norm, causing global devastation; that by 2040 much of Europe will be Saharan; and parts of London will be underwater.

Lovelock believes global warming is now irreversible, and that nothing can prevent large parts of the planet becoming too hot to inhabit, or sinking underwater, resulting in mass migration, famine and epidemics. Britain is going to become a lifeboat for refugees from mainland Europe...

(he) expects "about 80%" of the world's population to be wiped out by 2100.

There'll be nine billion people on Planet Earth within the next two decades. If six or seven billion people are going to die in the next century, as Lovelock predicts, that's an awful lot of bodies kicking around. Perhaps we could find a way to convert the most prolific available resource, human corpses, into energy? Continuing mass death could then become renewable energy.

Forget it. Lovelock thinks renewable energy is a joke. He openly mocks those who want to save the world by changing their lightbulbs.

More alarming even than his apocalyptic climate predictions is his utter certainty that almost everything we're trying to do about it is wrong.

"It's just too late for it," he says. "Perhaps if we'd gone along routes like that in 1967, it might have helped. But we don't have time. All these standard green things, like sustainable development, I think these are just words that mean nothing."

He dismisses eco ideas briskly, one by one. "Carbon offsetting? I wouldn't dream of it. It's just a joke. To pay money to plant trees, to think you're offsetting the carbon? You're probably making matters worse. You're far better off giving to the charity Cool Earth, which gives the money to the native peoples to not take down their forests."

And recycling, he adds, is "almost certainly a waste of time and energy", while having a "green lifestyle" amounts to little more than "ostentatious grand gestures". He distrusts the notion of ethical consumption. "Because always, in the end, it turns out to be a scam ... or if it wasn't one in the beginning, it becomes one."

He saves his thunder for what he considers the emptiest false promise of all - renewable energy.

"You're never going to get enough energy from wind to run a society such as ours," he says. "Windmills! Oh no. No way of doing it. You can cover the whole country with the blasted things, millions of them. Waste of time."

No need to be nasty, Mr Lovelock. A few million windmills could be very handy indeed if great swathes of England's population is looking for higher ground when your vengeful oceans wash over the sea walls. Not a lot of higher ground in much of England, which is where very tall windmills could prove to be life savers.

But Lovelock doesn't want people to be saved. They have to die, you see. Well, most of them. Most of us. More on that later.

(Lovelock) introduced the Gaia hypothesis, a revolutionary theory that the Earth is a self-regulating super-organism. Initially ridiculed by many scientists as new age nonsense, today that theory forms the basis of almost all climate science.

Hmm, might that be part of the problem? What was once "new age nonsense" forming the foundation of attempts to re-invent the production of energy? Or to introduce a global tax system based around 'carbon currency' anyway.

More from the story :

As with most people, my panic about climate change is equalled only by my confusion over what I ought to do about it.

Stop panicking for starters?

A meeting with Lovelock therefore feels a little like an audience with a prophet.

Prophets have been foretelling Armageddon since time began, he says. "But this is the real thing."

Prophets have also been saying that for a long time, too.

Lovelock, the misery-chuffed old shit, appears to have laughed and grinned and smiled his way through this interview. He predicts doom for almost all, and laughs about it.

"Well I'm cheerful!" he says, smiling. "I'm an optimist. It's going to happen."

Maybe he's laughing because he knows a million or so people will buy his new book, to read of how utterly fruitless the global effort will be to stop climate change destructorama.

People love disaster movies and end-of-the-world stories, they are embedded in the bedrock of ancient stories and culture of nearly every race and religion in the world.

But what was once science fiction, or speculative fiction, can now go up on bookstore shelves as non-fiction, and be filed under "science" or, more in keeping with new bookshop trends, "climate change".

Humanity is in a period exactly like 1938-9, he explains, when "we all knew something terrible was going to happen, but didn't know what to do about it". But once the second world war was under way, "everyone got excited, they loved the things they could do, it was one long holiday ... so when I think of the impending crisis now, I think in those terms. A sense of purpose - that's what people want."

What the fuck is this old bastard talking about? What kind of loon thinks World War 2 was "one long holiday"?

At moments I wonder about Lovelock's credentials as a prophet.

How about his credentials as a sane, emphatic human being?

Sometimes he seems less clear-eyed with scientific vision than disposed to see the version of the future his prejudices are looking for.

The journalist is disturbed because Lovelock is not frightened of the doom he predicts. He's actually looking forward to it.

Lovelock : "There have been seven disasters since humans came on the earth, very similar to the one that's just about to happen. I think these events keep separating the wheat from the chaff. And eventually we'll have a human on the planet that really does understand it and can live with it properly. That's the source of my optimism."

Lovelock is looking forward to the unfolding of a new age of humans. Fine. Unfortunately for most of the current and soon to be born humanity, according to Lovelock, the new age of humans will only begin after Gaia has her "revenge" and slaughters billions, turns arable land into desert and unleashes her oceans into towns and cities.

His crushing disappointment (if he lives long enough) will be our salvation.

Did I Say "Holocaust"? I Meant To Say "Disaster"

UPDATE : Some 60 Palestinians have now died during Israel's latest assault on Gaza. Two Israeli Defence Force soldiers have also been killed in the fighting.


The collective punishment in the Gaza Strip continues, as the rocket fire into Israel increases and the rhetoric-of-human-destruction grows more insane on both sides :

Israel's deputy defence minister yesterday warned his country was close to launching a huge military operation in Gaza and said Palestinians would bring on themselves a "bigger shoah," using the Hebrew word usually reserved for the Holocaust.

The choice of vocabulary from Matan Vilnai, an often outspoken former army general, was unusually grave - the word is not normally used for anything other than the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews.

Vilnai was speaking about his government's plans to tackle the continued firing of makeshift rockets, known as Qassams, from Gaza.

"The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves," he said, in a telephone interview with army radio yesterday morning.

In just two days this week, Israeli military strikes killed 33 Palestinians in Gaza, among them several civilians, including four young boys who were playing football and an infant.

Palestinian militants fired dozens of rockets into southern Israel, killing one man in Sderot, and reaching as far as the city of Ashkelon, 11 miles away.

It was the latest in several recent rounds of violence in Gaza, a conflict that Israeli officials already describe as a "war."

According to the United Nations, 80 Palestinians were killed and 82 injured by Israeli military strikes in Gaza in January alone.

At the same time 267 rockets and 256 mortars were fired towards Israel, injuring nine Israelis.

Abbas Slams Israel's Gaza 'Holocaust'

Islamic, Gulf Organisations Denounce Gaza 'Massacres'

Israel Kills 32 In Gaza Operations

40 Rockets Hit Israel In One Day, Two Children Injured

American Firefighters Trained To Handle UFO Crashes

From Chapter 13 of 'The Fire Officer's Guide To Disaster Control' which is reportedly distributed widely through American firehouses :

"Enemy Attack And UFO Potential" - It would be remiss to not give some part to the role fire departments might play in the even of the unexpected arrival of UFO's in their communities...In a less optimistic scenario, you may have engine trouble upon approaching the scene, and radio contact could be lost with your dispatcher. If at night, your headlights could go out, the city could be blacked out, and your portable generators may malfunction when you attempt to use them for fans and portable lights.

No detail on how to avoid the apparently mandatory alien anal probes.