Monday, July 23, 2007

@ edukashion


Anarchy and Education

Our theme for our July Carnival is
Anarchism and Education.


A.S. Neill, The Modern School, Ivan Illich, homeschooling in a statist society, homeschooling in the age of neo-conservative anti-public education, pedagogy of the oppressed, Pablo Fiere, Fransisco Fiere, Emma Goldman, the origins of American public education in Nativism and the KKK, classical education, dead white men, deconstruction, academia, autodidactic intellectuals, working class intellectuals, education and class, post secondary proletarians, William Morris, Godwin, Shelly, Byron, Keats, Mary Wollstencroft, Mary Wollsencraft Shelly, the narodniki, Bakunin, Kropotkins Appeal to the Young, the SI, France 1968, read a book.

The carnival will run July 27-August 5th.

'I never let my schooling interfere with my education'.
Mark Twain.



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Sea Serpent

Here is an interesting Sea Serpent that actually has been documented in scientific journals. And it is Canadian.

Cadboro Bay in British Columbia claims Caddy, or Cadborosaurus willsi, a serpent-like creature that to this day remains the only monster ever described in a scientific journal.

The existence of the species has been suggested by the original specimen-based description in a refereed scientific journal in which the type juvenile specimen is represented by 3 different close-up quality photographs (in the B. C. Provincial Archives in Victoria), in which at least three new-born relatively tiny precocial "baby" specimens have been independently held by at least three pairs of human captors during the past 40 years, and by more than 100 documented sightings, photographs, sonar images, and sketches of live animals made independently at predicted times and places, subsequent to the original description in 1995 and continuing to the present

In the Amphipacifica Journal of Systematic Biology Drs. Paul H. LeBlond and Edward L. Bousfield review the large aquatic reptile known as "Caddy" from the Pacific coast of North America. Bousfield and LeBlond believe the historical records about this creature contain sufficient evidence of "specimens in hand" to conclude "the animal is real and merits formal taxonomic description," and propose it be named and diagnosed with vertebrate class Reptilia as Cadborosaurus willsi, new genus, new species.

Many people have spotted a large marine cryptid from coastal areas of the northeast Pacific Ocean and sporadically these sightings have been reported by the news media. Bousfield and LeBlond describe it as "a large serpentine animal (adult body length 15-20 meters), clearly unlike any whale, pinniped, fish, or other existing vertebrate animal that makes only brief appearances at the sea surface, presenting distinctive head, a long neck, and trunk region that often forms into number of vertical humps or loops. Its swimming speed is astonishing to those who try to approach it, invariably unsuccessfully."


And while the article the first link is from;Sea monsters: Not real, but good for business describes many fresh lake sea monster sightings, it basically claims they are all made up. Of course as per usual I believe many of them may be sightings of the rare and endangered ancient dinosaur fish the sturgeon.


See:

Die Vurm

Snakes Alive

Nessies Relative

Nessie?



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Chupacabra In Texas?

So is this strange animal discovered in Texas the mythological Porte Rican Chupacabra, or just a naked coyote? Place your wagers.


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See:

Die Vurm

Congo's Ghosts

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Biological Weapons In Iraq

When one thinks of biological weapons one thinks of germs and viruses, and perhaps cattle mutilations and black helicopters,but not man-eating badgers.

Clearly the British army has to do more to win the hearts and minds of folks in Basra.


It's one of the more extraordinary statements issued by those chaps in the British Army.

"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area," said British military spokesman Major Mike Shearer.

To make it crystal, another spokesman added: "We have not released giant badgers in Basra and nor have we been collecting eggs and releasing serpents into the Shatt al-Arab river."

Rumours abound among people in the southern Iraqi city that British troops based in the area since 2003 introduced bear-like beasts, with large fangs and claws and a penchant for human flesh, to sow panic.

But despite the fantastic rumours spreading through Basra about the origins of the animals, they have been identified by local vets as the honey badger.

Mushtaq Abdul-Mahdi, director of Basra's veterinary hospital, has inspected the corpses of several dead badgers and has tried to reassure his fellow citizens that the badgers are not a new post-war arrival in the region.

"These animals appeared before the fall of the regime in 1986. They are known as Al-Ghirayri and locally as Al-Girta," he said. "Talk that this animal was brought by the British forces is incorrect and unscientific."

The honey badger, or ratel, is known as a brave predator capable of killing a cobra. It weighs up to 14 kilos and is not known to kill humans and drag them away to its lair.

This reminds me of the Frank Zappa album Weasels Ripped My Flesh.

After all the Badger is a member of the same family as the weasel .

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And speaking of weasels, Prince Harry who was supposed to go to Basra is currently stationed at one of NATO's leading Biological Chemical Warfare Research stations; Suffield Base in Medicine Hat.


See:

Iraqi Ghost Dance


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Our Living Earth

It's Alive.

Lovelock's Gaia thesis is that the Earth, our home, is alive. Though she may not be interested in the goings on of the surface dwellers. I began this post a week ago, and while posting a nuclear leak occurred in Japan after an earthquake and as these posts show there was wide spread tectonic plate activity this last week and over the last month all across the globe.


More than 5000 tremors have been felt since January in the Patagonia region of Chile, causing residents to fear that a cataclysmic earthquake may surface.

Kenya: Earth Tremors Cause Panic in Nairobi Tremors hit Peshawar, Swat

Two 5.0 magnitude earthquakes jolt Negros Oriental

Uganda: Heavy Rains Causing Tremors, Says Expert

Tremors shake Portsmouth again — second this month

Another quake hits the North People living in the Burmese town of Tachilek and Laos' Bokeo province also felt the tremors.

PESHAWAR: An earthquake of mild intensity was felt in Peshawar and Swat districts on Sunday at 1724 hours. According to Peshawar Meteorological Station, magnitude of the earthquake on the Richter scale was recorded at 4.8. The epicenter of the tremor was about 300 kilometres north of Peshawar in the Hindukush Range, it said.



Then a couple of days later I discovered in the discount bin a book on the social and geological history of the 1906 San Fransisco Quake. Simon Winchesters; A Crack In the Edge of the World.

It outlines not only the geological faults that resulted in the San Fransisco quake, in light of the recent 2004 Tsunami, reviewers were quick to link it to the recent hurricanes; Katrina and Rita that destroyed New Orleans.

Winchester relates that 1906 was record year for massive, 8 and higher on the Richter Scale, earthquakes around the world, the plates all shifted. Which is the BIG picture of life on earth. Get practicing on your skate boards for the global shift.

Ours is an age of disasters: natural, as in hurricanes, tsunamis, famines, earthquakes, fires, and man-made, as in war and terrorism.

It's hardly surprising, then, that such a distinguished writer as Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman and Krakatoa, should commemorate the approaching 100th anniversary of the earthquake and fire that began at dawn on April 18, 1906, and nearly destroyed San Francisco.

But Winchester doesn't confine himself to the disaster itself. He provides a virtual guidebook to the world of tremors and earthquakes and the geological conditions that produce them. He also examines the long-range effects of the San Francisco disaster.

With hurricanes Katrina and Rita fresh in our memory, Winchester's words on the far-reaching consequences of natural calamities strike home:

Seldom does an entire and very large urban community fall victim to utter disaster ... The dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are among the most obvious. The Great Fire of London in 1666. ... The huge earthquake in 1755 in Lisbon — and then, in 1906, San Francisco. ... The largest of these cities and areas survived [because they] exist for reasons that go far beyond the accumulation of buildings that is their outward manifestation. Their presence ... is invariably due to some combination of geography and of climate, together with some vague and indefinable organic reason that persuades mankind to settle there.

So it was with New Orleans and San Francisco. Otherwise, who would live in a city situated below sea level and adjoining a stormy sea? Who would want to settle in a place where, over the years, numerous earthquakes and fires have occurred?

In New Orleans, the catastrophe came from the sea; in San Francisco, from the earth, specifically the San Andreas Fault, which runs from Northern to Southern California, ending at the Salton Sea near the Mexican border.

Winchester, who trained in geology at Oxford, gives the reader a short course in geological theory, detailing the history of geological ideas. He shows why the 1906 earthquake occurred and why such a catastrophe will almost certainly recur near the same place.

The San Francisco earthquake changed the life of the city. More than 28,000 buildings were laid waste. Estimates of the dead range from about 600 to about 3,000. More than half of the city's population of 400,000 were left homeless.

Before the quake, moreover, San Francisco was the preeminent city of the American West. After the quake, slowly but inexorably, that title passed to Los Angeles, 400 miles to the south. Various things wrought the change, but among them was this: The San Andreas Fault in Southern California has never been as destructive as in the north. Los Angeles has had its quakes, but so far none has come close to devastating the city.

Winchester points out that tectonic plate activity is a source of earthquake activity as much as magma movements are and current research verifies this.

Tremors deep inside the Earth are usually produced by magma flowing beneath volcanoes, but a new study suggests they can also be produced by the shifting and sliding of tectonic plates. "Unlike the sharp jolt of an earthquake, tremors within Earth's crust emerge slowly, rumbling for longer periods of time," explained Kaye Shedlock, the program director for Earthscope at the National Science Foundation.

These are the first recordings of non-volcanic tremors deep inside the Earth. They were recorded in deep boreholes that were drilled down to a depth of about 2 miles.

Instead of volcanoes, the scientists think the subterranean rumblings might be caused by processes similar to those that produce tremors near the Cascadia Subduction Zone, an active fault that runs from mid-Vancouver Island to northern California.



Add to that the fact that some scientists believe the Earth is about to reverse polarity, and well as they say; 'all Hell will break loose'.


So lets go back to the beginning of this post which I began last Monday five days after the initial shocks as a result of our living earths tectonic plate movements, which are slow as molasses in January as my mother would say, resulted in a series of earthquakes and other seismic activities.
Tanzania's 'Mountain of God' erupts

Kenyan panic after more tremors

US geologists say recent earth tremors were due to a seismological process known as seismc swarm


Research on earth tremors necessary, say local geologists


The Japanese earthquake ,Southwestern Japan proving temblor hotspot, resulted in exposing the poor safety and maintenance record of their privatized nuclear industry. Tremors spotlight nuclear plants

But there is always a silver lining.

Many earthquakes in the deep ocean are much smaller in magnitude than expected. Geophysicists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have found new evidence that the fragmented structure of seafloor faults, along with previously unrecognized volcanic activity, may be dampening the effects of these quakes.

Examining data from 19 locations in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, researchers led by graduate student Patricia Gregg have found that "transform" faults are not developing or behaving as plate tectonic theory says they should. Rather than stretching as long, continuous fault lines across the seafloor, the faults are often segmented and show signs of recent or ongoing volcanism. Both phenomena appear to prevent earthquakes from spreading across the seafloor, thus reducing their magnitude and impact.

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Until you get the big picture. Which is that it is not magma alone that is responsible for earthquakes and volcanic activity, some of it is human, (oil and gas drilling, nuclear blasts), and much of it is now being attributed to tectonic plate activity as well. Because a week later, early this morning another quake hit India.

Moderate quake in India, mild tremors in Delhi



Along with the threat of global warming and asteroids now we have to consider Gaia evolving herself, and we are just along for the ride.


See:

Boreno is Burning

Did Nuke Cause Earth Quake

Our Living Earth

Dialectics of Extinction

(r)Evolutionary Theory

Earth in Upheaval-Updated

1666 The Creation Of The World

Man Made Volcano

Lost Tsunami Lost Atlantis

New Island

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Wednesday, July 18, 2007

18/7

Steam power is the basis of the industrial revolution and the birth of Capitalism in America. Some of the steam lines in New York City date back to then. And steam is inherently explosive.

Huge Steam Pipe Blast Kills One in NYC


Emergency personnel look over a truck that lies in a hole in the street after a steam explosion in midtown Manhattan, New York, Wednesday, July 18, 2007. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

A transformer exploded in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday, creating a roar and a huge plume of smoke and sending pedestrians fleeing from the area in scenes reminiscent of the September 11 attacks.

Police at the scene said 15 to 20 people had been taken to the hospital. CNN said three of the injured had been admitted to the New York Presbyterian Hospital emergency room.

In Washington, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security official said there was no apparent link to terrorism.

"Right now it is a localized incident," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "At this point, we see no nexus to terrorism."

Officials said a ruptured steam pipe appeared to have caused the transformer to blow.

The explosion erupted during the evening rush hour in one of the busiest sections of New York City, near the transportation hub of Grand Central station.

A loud constant roar rang out through the streets.



Steam explosion caused by interaction of lava and sea water, Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii

Photograph by J.D. Griggs on February 3, 1988
Steam explosions (also called littoral explosions, because they occur at the shoreline, or littoral zone) result when lava meets the sea. In the photograph above, the explosion sprays fragments of lava into the air. The smaller pieces are carried by currents and deposited in bays to form black sand beaches.


SEE:

Nuclear NIMBY


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Monday, July 16, 2007

And Justice For All

Shareholders rights upheld in Lord Blacks trial which has conservatives all in a tizzy. Since they favored the aristocratic pretensions of robber baron Black rather than the rights of the 'little guy and gal'.


For Prince, 58, Black's fate was sealed in a 2002 shareholders' meeting.

As prosecutors played the recording, and she heard angry investors lambasting Black about why he and other high-ranking Hollinger executives were receiving millions in non-compete payments, Prince decided she would do everything she could to convict him of fraud.

In fact, if it were up to her, Black would also be going down on an additional fraud count. Had that happened, she said, it might have shown the pattern of criminal activity jurors needed to convict the fallen media baron of the most serious charge of all – racketeering.

Despite efforts to avoid media during the trial, jurors overheard in an elevator one day that some Canadian media had called them a "blue collar" jury and critiqued their appearance. "When we were deadlocked, one of the jurors, she's a teacher, gave us a pep talk," said Prince. "She said, 'They're calling us country bumpkins. They think we're too stupid to figure out this case.' And it brought us all together. We were going back in there with a unanimous verdict," she said.




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Torture Porn


I see that the MSM have spent this weekend focusing on what they call Torture Porn which I wrote about in Gore Kulture. Cliff from Rusty Idols and I then proceeded to have a running discussion on the phenomena in the comments.


From horror film to torture porn

Torture porn films - horror or hype?

Is there any escape from tired, old torture-porn?

Hollywood, movie fans shy away from "torture porn"

Held captive to torture-porn zeitgeist

Torture porn for popcorn eaters not up to snuff

Filmgoers may be fed up with sadistic gore


See

Gothic Capitalism Redux

Jack the Ripper

Emotional Plague


Serial Murder


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Die Vurm

Gathering dust for a hundred years; a source for De Vermis Mysteriis
A University of Alberta paleontologist has helped discover the existence of a 95 million-year-old snakelike marine animal, a finding that provides not only the earliest example of limbloss in lizards but the first example of limbloss in an aquatic lizard.

The fossil was originally collected during the 19th Century from a limestone quarry in Slovenia. It then sat at the Natural History Museum in Trieste, Italy for almost 100 years before Caldwell and a colleague found it in 1996 during a trip to Europe. He later connected with Alessandro Palci, then a graduate student in Italy whom he helped supervise, and they worked on the fossil together.

The researchers soon realized the lizard's front limbs were not formed during development. "There was a moment when I said, 'I think we stumbled on a new fossil illustrating some portion of the aquatic process of losing limbs,'" said Caldwell. "There are lots of living lizards that love to lose their forelimbs and then their rearlimbs, but we didn't know it was being done 100 million years ago and we didn't know that it was happening among groups of marine lizards."

Ancient giant serpents were known as worms (vurms, wurms),in Europe. Giant serpents or legless lizards may have existed into the modern age. They are not to be confused with Dragons, which are a different kind of beastie, though they commonly are.

If huge giant things roaming the Scottish hills were not enough, we have also had to contend with huge dragon things too. If you had been around in the 12th century you could have visited the Linton Worm who lived in a hollow outside Jedburgh on Linton Hill in the Scottish Borders (still called Worms Den to this day). The dragon terrorised the country, eating cattle and generally making a nuisance of himself. He was finally dispatched at the point of a peat-coated lance by a courageous - some would say reckless - lad called Sommerville of Larison. There have been no more dragon-sightings since.


Like the Lambton worm which was featured in Bram Stokers Lair of the White Worm. Which was made into a passable bit of gothic horror blasphemy by over the top art house director Ken Russell.


The Nordic saga of the Giant worm plays a role in the popular revolutionary imagination of Wagners Ring Cycle.

Now the Giants have the Hoard and Ring safe-kept by a monstrous Worm in the Gnita- (Neid-) Haide [the Grove of Grudge]. Through the Ring the Nibelungs remain in thraldom, Alberich and all. But the Giants do not understand to use their might; their dullard minds are satisfied with having bound the Nibelungen. So the Worm lies on the Hoard since untold ages, in inert dreadfulness: before the lustre of the new race of Gods the Giants' race fades down and stiffens into impotence; wretched and tricksy, the Nibelungen go their way of fruitless labour. Alberich broods without cease on the means of gaining back the Ring.
In the period around this first prose résumé and the first libretto sketches for the Ring, the years 1848 and 1849, Wagner also wrote several important texts which may shed light on his intentions with the tetralogy. Among them are «Die Wibelungen. Weltgeschichte aus der Sage» (The Wibelungen. World History as told in Saga), which includes several sections on the Nibelungs, «Die Revolution» (The Revolution), «Die Kunst und die Revolution» (Art and Revolution) and «Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft» (The Art-work of the Future), all written in 1849 These works are very likely to have been influenced by the philosopher Feuerbach, whom Wagner is known to have read at that time, and with whose writings stylistically common traits have been found at least in The Wibelungen, by the anarchist Proudhon, whom he probably also read (certainly in Paris in 1849), as well as by the ideas of the socialist thinkers Max Stirner, Mikhael Bakunin and Karl Marx.

A Brief Introduction to Norse Myth


When Ragnarok would come,
the winter would last for three years and would be
extremely bitter. The two giant wolves, Skoll and Hati,
would devour the Sun and Moon whilst starts would fall
from the heavens. The giant worm Nidhogg, which was
gnawing on the roots of the Yggdrasil for the longest of
times, would finally succeed. The root Nidhogg succeeded
in gnawing through was the root that supported Niflheim.
Loki, who had been confined for causing Balder's death
escaped his imprisonment. Loki would rally with the
frost giants and his offspring and would lead them
against the Sons of Mankind and the Gods. Fenrir would
escape the magical Fetter, the Midgard Serpent,
Jormungand, would slither out of the ocean. The Frost
Giants and Mountain Giants would leave their home in
Jotunheim, sailing on a ship known as Naglfar, whilst
their cousins the fire giants would leave their realm
of Fire, Muspelheim.

And Australia has recorded the largest earth worm ever, 13 feet long.

Of course worms are not legless serpents, nor some strange creature out of Tremors. Or out of the sewer in a town in Georgia.


Employees at the Huddle House had been having problems with the restaurant’s drainage line clogging up and when plumbers came by to check on the problem they found that some unknown species of animal had apparently crawled through the city sewer lines toward the Huddle House until it became lodged in the line just short of the outside clean-out plug. When a worker spotted the plug, he grabbed it and began pulling it out. And he pulled and he pulled and he pulled until an eight foot long, white, skinless, eyeless snake-like creature emerged. At first glance, it appeared to be a long grease clog. But closer inspection revealed that its composition was of a meat-like consistency. And it had the makings of a mouth. But, apparently, had no skeletal structure.


Or in the Gobi Desert.
The first time you hear about the Mongolian Death Worm you assume it has to be a joke; it sounds too much like the monster from a B-movie or an especially dire comic book to be true. A five-foot (1.5m) long worm dwelling in the vast and inhospitable expanses of the Gobi Desert, the creature is known to Mongolia’s nomadic tribesmen as the allghoi khorkhoi (sometimes given as allerghoi horhai or olgoj chorchoj) or ‘intestine worm’ for its resemblance to a sort of living cow’s intestine. Apparently red in colour, sometimes described as having darker spots or blotches, and sometimes said to bear spiked projections at both ends, the khorkhoi is reputedly just as dangerous as its alarming appearance would suggest, squirting a lethal corrosive venom at its prey and capable of killing by discharging a deadly electric shock, even at a distance of some feet.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are offering a free documentary, watchable on their website, on the hunt for the fabled "Mongolian Death Worm". In 2005, respected writer-researcher Richard Freeman led a four man team from the CFZ to Mongolia in search of the notorious worm; a fabled reptilian beast said to spit venom and kill its victims with electric blasts. The investigation is documented in "The Lair of the Red Worm", which can be viewed in two parts - Part One and Part Two.
And in this day and age of modern virtual myths you can play a Giant Worm in a PC Game.


Giant worms fascinate us.
We loved them in Beetlejuice, we thought they were cool in Dune, and we loved watching them be blown away in Tremors. I've seen giant worms pop up as enemies in games before, most recently in Lost Planet. Death Worm may be the first game, indie or otherwise, that lets us play as the giant beasts though.


SEE

Nessie?

Snakes Alive

Nessies Relative


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