Friday, December 2, 2011

Significa 12-2-11

Konformist Book Club

Sub Rosa America and the Fall of the New Atlantis
Ebook By Elana Freeland
$4.99
Published: Nov. 28, 2011
Category: Fiction » Literature » Visionary & metaphysical
Language: English
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/109139

A fictional history of underbelly American occult politics. In 1970, seven Sixties seekers stumble into a military quantum Time experiment in the Southwest desert while en route to Dallas to see where John F. Kennedy was murdered. The future unfolds before them in dreams, ghosts, hitchhikers, scientists on the run, and KRMA radio as they connect the dots between the America of then with 2012.

Told from a 2019 perspective when all the Earth is convulsing and the United States of America is collapsing due either to Nature taking back her own, or to a HAARP-driven error, or to a purposeful Tesla sabotage to force a new beginning, Sub Rosa America and the Fall of the New Atlantis is the occult history of the United States since November 22, 1963 that we all should have read years ago before we fell asleep in front of the TV.

Book I, “Gone to Croatan,” revisits the ideals of the Sixties Counterculture at the University of California at Santa Barbara just after the Bank of America has been burned to the ground. A tangled web of political intrigue generated by intelligence factions back East draws six protagonists together and forces a decision to flee into the Southwest desert.

Book II, “The Future Arrives By Stealth,” is divided into the four states the intrepid trippers journey through: “California,” “Arizona,” “New Mexico,” and “Texas.” Once on the Mother Road, they pick up a Mayan Timekeeper and Cosmic Coincidence Control is set in motion. The Strangelovian American military is running Time experiments in the Southwest desert in an effort to monkeywrench the Immanentizing of the Eschaton (better known as the Second Coming). Upon entering this quantum zone, the Time-trippers encounter Native America, hitchhikers, dreamers, the dead, fleeing scientists, KRMA radio, laundromats, UFOs, and even an EBE (extraterrestrial biological entity), all with stories to tell about how America’s covert past will translate in the future. By Dallas, California dreamin’ is history and a nightmare awaits the Time-trippers on Elm Street. Facing the truth, however, ensures that they will choose to live very different lives than they would have, had they not hit the Mother Road.

Book III, “The Mayan’s Chronicle,” details Mayan Timekeeper Vicente Liputzli’s account of how allowing politics to mix with occult Brotherhoods served as death warrant to the republic and birth certificate to the new world order previously known as the New Atlantis.


The Legend of the Large-Penised White Male
Authored by El Muy Lorenzo
https://www.createspace.com/3677369

This is the humorous story of the probe El Muy Lorenzo who has been sent to us on planet Earth by the Principal Investigator (P.I.) in outer space. After observing human trials and tribulations over the ages the P.I. has concluded that much of human conflict and fighting is the result of errors that he made in DNA in the original creation. He thus has sent this probe, named El Muy Lorenzo, to convey his new improved ZNA to humans on planet Earth. Unfortunately, several programming errors were made during Lorenzo's construction which have led him to have a signature physical characteristic and rather exuberant sexual preoccupations.

The Legend of the Large-Penised White Male tells about Lorenzo's arrival and insertion into human society, his marriage, and his experiences as an academic in a fictitious American university from the 1970s to the end of the 1990s, including those with his various mistresses. The story is conveyed in the voice of an anonymous author and much of the content reflects Lorenzo's conversations with his psychiatrist Dr. Shitsteak and Shitsteak's assessment of Lorenzo's condition. It is a humorous story and a biting social satire of life in academia and the US during the last quarter of the 20th century.

Publication Date:Oct 08 2011
ISBN/EAN13:1466261668 / 9781466261662
Page Count:246


Borderlands: The Fallen
John Shirley

Paperback List Price: $16.00
Price: $10.88 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
You Save: $5.12 (32%)

Kindle Edition: $9.99

Series: Borderlands | Publication Date: November 22, 2011

WHAT KIND OF MAN MAKES A LIVING IN HELL?

His name’s Roland. Soldier class, a former mercenary, he’s on a full-time mission to scrape a living out of the most dangerous planet in the galaxy.

Is he qualified? He’s well armed, he’s ruthless, and he’s tougher than skag hide. And, oh yeah—he’s strapped with some of the most exotic weaponry this side of the Vault, not to mention possessing fists like chunks of steel.

Zac Finn and his wife and young son had better get on the right side of Roland, because a stopover in orbit has turned into a nightmarish fall to the unforgiving landscape of the Borderlands. Zac hopes to find a strange new alien treasure in the Borderlands to turn his down-spiraling life around. But his wife, Marla, and his son, Cal, just want to survive, and reunite, because catastrophe has left them separated by hundreds of klicks. Their chances aren’t good . . . and Roland is all that stands between them and the planet’s kill-crazed Psychos and murderous bandits—not to mention the grotesque primals, giant wyrm squids, insane tunnel rats, voracious skags, brutal bruisers, and ruthless mercs. . . .

An original novel set in the universe of the Rated M for Mature video game created by Gearbox Software and published by 2K Games.

Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Gallery Books; Original edition (November 22, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1439198470
ISBN-13: 978-1439198476

Amazon URL

Paperback:
http://www.amazon.com/Borderlands-Fallen-John-Shirley/dp/1439198470/thekonformist

Kindle Edition:
http://www.amazon.com/Borderlands-The-Fallen-ebook/dp/B004T4KXRI/thekonformist

To read an excerpt of the book:

http://www.konformist.com/2011/Borderlands-TheFallen-Excerpt.pdf

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Here are some fun facts about Christmas:

In the Ukraine, it’s considered good luck if you find a spider web on Christmas morning.

During the Middle Ages, Christmas trees were hung upside down.

Cost to decorate a Christmas tree with electric lights in 1899: $300.

Q: How do you say Merry Christmas in Japanese? A: Merii Kurisumasu.

Bestselling Christmas album of all time: Elvis’ Christmas Album (1957).

Average growing time for Christmas trees to reach proper height: 7 to 10 years.

Two states, Oregon and Michigan, provide the majority of the nation’s Christmas trees.

In his will, Robert Louis Stevenson gave his Nov. birthday to a friend who was born on Christmas.

How about you? The average adult American male receives six Christmas presents.

Source: BathroomReader.com

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YouTube Clip of the Week

Maria Orsic and VRIL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuHJz-xPopU

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10 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time
Source: RollingStone.com

1. Jimi Hendrix
2. Eric Clapton
3. Jimmy Page
4. Keith Richards
5. Jeff Beck
6. B.B. King
7. Chuck Berry
8. Eddie Van Halen
9. Duane Allman
10. Pete Townshend

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Awesome Quotes: Paul Krugman on Newt Gingrich

"He’s a stupid man’s idea of what a smart person sounds like."

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Word Game: See if you can figure out what these seven words all have in common?

1. Banana
2. Dresser
3. Grammar
4. Potato
5. Revive
6. Uneven
7. Assess

Are you peeking or have you already given up?
Give it another try...

Look at each word carefully. You'll kick yourself when you discover the answer. This is so cool...











No, it is not that they all have at least 2 double letters...

Let me know if you found the answer - I didn't!

Answer is below!










Answer:

In all of the words listed, if you take the first letter, place it at the end of the word, and then spell the word backwards, it will be the same word. Did you figure it out? No? Then send this to more people and stump them as well.. Then, you'll feel better too.

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io9.com has a great article on the Raelians, which includes some nice pics of hot Raelian chicks...

Meet the Raelians: Inside the World’s Strangest — and Nicest — UFO Sex Clone Religion:

http://io9.com/5860418/meet-the-raelians-inside-the-worlds-strangest--and-nicest--ufo-sex-clone-religion

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Kool Website: Cameron ETF Trading
http://thebestlittlehedgefund.com/

What is Cameron? And is this REALLY a Hedge Fund?

Cameron is an Artificial Intelligence, stock market predicting computer program exclusively developed in 2009 by Edward Francis Slayton Jr. The computer program uses 100% of computer processing power to analyze a large set of previous daily stock market candle data every night on two dual-core laptop computers within the 17 hour period of time between one day’s stock market close and the next day’s stock market open. The computer program does this to come up with an extremely accurate Buying Pressure or Selling Pressure reading for the next trading day, in order to know if the stock market is going to go up or down in the near term. From this accurate market pressure reading, Day Trades can be extracted that are simple enough for the average trader to execute, and are profitable enough to maintain constant quarterly profits in your trading account...

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Six Degrees of Facebook

It's official: 99.7 percent of all Facebook users are indeed within 6 degrees of seperation of each other as friends. The average person is 4.74 degrees in friendship to one another...

http://digitallife.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/22/8950195-facebook-6-degrees-of-separation-more-like-4

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Movie News

The holiday season has already produced some excellent family films, including Sony Pictures' 3D animated Arthur Christmas & Martin Scorsese's 3D live-action Hugo:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/reviews/story/2011-11-22/arthur-christmas/51352276

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/24/scorseses_spectacular_3_d_hugo


Perhaps the biggest surprise of the winter is another family flck, The Muppets reboot (co-written by actor Jason Segal, who appears in the film) which got this rave review from FireDogLake.com, a site better known for its political coverage:

The values of The Muppets are in many ways an example for all of us to live by. Segel put it best in an interview for NPR’s “Fresh Air”: “The Muppets don’t get laughs at other people’s expense... It’s part of what I really loved about the Muppets. They don’t even want to destroy their villains. They want to reform their villains.” And Segel added in the “first Muppet movie, when the villain Doc Hopper wants to cut off Kermit’s legs to make frog legs” Kermit doesn’t want to destroy Doc Hopper. He is “like, ‘Maybe you should think about why you don’t have friends. Maybe you’re just lonely and you need to be a happier person.’”

Those values appear in this movie as the thought occurs to Kermit that he could just ask Richman if he would find it in his heart to give the gang the studio back because it is the right thing to do. He’s an oil tycoon only interested in money and rejects this appeal from The Muppets. Kermit and the others may have known Richman would never give them the studio back but they do not think it could hurt to ask.

The combination of virtue and campiness is the kind of essence, which I think keeps a human being from being harsh and cynical in this world. In fact, there is even a scene in the movie where Richman wants to replace the Muppets with a hard and cynical act for a hard and cynical world. The Muppets are pushing up against a world that finds it easier to adapt or profit from the hardness and cynicism of society and culture instead of pushing back against the popularity of callousness, indifference and other destructive ideals...

The charm is infectious. In a much deeper sense, it stands in sharp contrast to the socially degenerate every-man-for-himself ideals promoted widely in society and recently seen on display on Black Friday. And because that spirit of togetherness and goodness is such a part of The Muppets, because they exist solely to make us all laugh and have fun and want nothing more of us, they are a pleasure to listen to and watch on screen...

Film Review: ‘The Muppets’ Pushes Back Against Hardness & Cynicism in the World
Kevin Gosztola
Sunday November 27, 2011
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2011/11/27/muppets-push-back-against-hardness-cynicism


Meanwhile, Michele Williams is getting Oscar buzz for her performance as Marilyn Monroe in My Week With Marilyn:

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/23/my_week_with_marilyn_michelle_williams_dazzling_oscar_bid


Jeffrey Prtchett of Examiner.com ( http://www.examiner.com/paranormal-in-panama-city ) gives high marks to a movie out on DVD, Another Earth:

This film is a must see and has received great reviews and was well known at Sundance as spectacular. A woman gets into a horrible accident and kills a family and goes into mourning. During the same time society discovers another Earth that is just like ours and apparently so are the people inhabiting it. Just like us on many levels which then escalates into multidimensional high strangeness. I do not want to give to much away but including some spoilers below if you're interested in seeing this film. Lately I have come across a lot of great film making in the paranormal genre and decided to share them. A contest is going on where the main character can visit this replica Earth. What happens.. I don't know yet because the film is on pause and I got so excited I ran here to tell you about it exactly to alert you to this groovy film find. But already half way through and I give it five freaking stars! Check it out when you can and in the meantime here are some reviews from other sources. Did I also mention the main female character is hot and lays naked in the show staring at the other Earth? Hoowah. Hoowah. Back to the film I go!

http://www.examiner.com/paranormal-in-panama-city/sci-fi-film-another-earth-a-multidimensional-earth-is-found-spell-binding-review

Amazon URL:
http://www.amazon.com/Another-Earth-Two-Disc-Blu-ray-Digital/dp/B005LZW8FO/thekonformist

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10 Reasons Coffee is Both the Best and the Worst Beverage Ever Invented
Robert T. Gonzalez
Nov 21, 2011
http://io9.com/5861402/10-reasons-coffee-is-both-the-best-and-the-worst-beverage-ever-invented

Caffeine is the most commonly used mood-altering drug in the world, and coffee is one of the most popular means of ingesting it. Over 50% of Americans drink coffee on a daily basis, and that figure is thought to be increasing every year.

But there's more to coffee than its caffeine content, and scientists are perpetually trying to make sense of the various effects that this mysterious brew has on our bodies. Coffee's most recent brush with media attention came just a few weeks ago, with the release of a study that showed women who drank four cups of coffee per day had a 20% lower risk of depression than those who drank a cup or less per week. But coffee isn't always billed as a wonder beverage; caffeinated and decaffeinated versions alike have built up a pretty serious rap sheet over the years. Here are 10 reasons coffee is either an elixir of the gods, or an evil concoction we've all been duped into loving unconditionally.

10) Pro: Coffee + pain medication = extra pain relief

Cutting off your coffee intake may lead to headaches and other withdrawal symptoms, but even if you aren't a regular coffee-drinker, caffeine can actually help speed pain relief. According to WebMD, caffeine can make pain relievers 40% more effective in treating headaches, and also speeds the body's reaction to the medications. This is why many over the counter headache medications also contain caffeine.

9) Con: Just kidding — because coffee is also linked to headaches. Sort of. Probably.

As it turns out, investigations into the relationship between coffee consumption and headache relief go back a number of years, and are full of seemingly contradictory findings.

Take this study, for example, published in 2009 in the Journal of Headache and Pain. The authors found a relationship between high caffeine consumption (~500 mg/day) and headache prevalence, but they also showed that chronic headache symptoms (more than 14 days/month) were actually more common in low-to-moderate caffeine consumers (~125mg of caffeine/day). (As a point of reference, a tall brewed coffee from Starbucks averages around 270 mg of caffeine.) The authors write that "the results may indicate that high caffeine consumption changes chronic headache into infrequent headache." In other words: Fry may very well have been onto something with the idea of a golden threshold of coffee consumption.

8) Con: Those who French-press need to watch their cholesterol

A study conducted in 2007 at Baylor college of medicine determined that ingesting the structurally similar molecules cafestol and kahweol (both of which are found exclusively in coffee beans) can lead to significant increases in LDL levels in humans.

Here's the good news, though: paper coffee filters can actually bind cafestol and kahweol in the course of brewing, so the molecules never make it to your morning cup in any significant quantities. In other words, coffee really only ups your cholesterol if you prefer it prepared sans filter.

7) Pro: Cancer isn't fond of coffee

I almost wrote that cancer hates coffee, but the word "hate" is probably a little too strong. Sure, plenty of studies have demonstrated correlations between coffee consumption and reduced risk of cancer; rates of oral/pharyngeal, esophageal, breast, liver and prostate cancers all tend to be lower among java drinkers. The thing is, none of these studies can speak to causation, and many of them fail to turn up particularly strong correlations. Having said that, the correlations are significant — and it's definitely comforting that the balance tends to tip in favor of coffee having a beneficial impact on cancer incidence.

6) Con: Ulcers

If you've ever had the misfortune of nursing an ulcer, you know how excruciatingly painful they can be. Coffee can wreak havoc on the lining of your gastrointestinal tract, giving rise to ulcers and other forms of gastric irritation and damage. Add to this the fact that coffee consumption can often lead to anxiety and irritability, and you've got a recipe for some devastating stomach pains.

5) Con: Coffee — not so good for the babies

Numerous studies have pointed to a correlation between coffee consumption in pregnant mothers and an increased likelihood of miscarriage. One of the more recent — and arguably most thorough — of these studies was published in 2008 in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and found that the risk of miscarriage is more than double in women who consume over 200 mg or more of caffeine per day. 200 mg/day is also the upper caffeine limit recommended by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

4) Pro: Coffee likely has a preventive effect against type 2 diabetes

While the studies on the correlation between coffee consumption and cancer aren't the most compelling, Harvard epidemiologist Frank Hu calls the data on coffee and type 2 diabetes "pretty solid," based on over 15 recently published studies:

The vast majority of those studies have shown a benefit of coffee on the prevention of diabetes. And now there is also evidence that decaffeinated coffee may have the same benefit as regular coffee.

Hu says the drink's benefits likely boil down to its antioxidant and mineral content — the minerals magnesium and chromium, in particular, are thought to help the body make use of the hormone insulin, which helps your body regulate blood sugar.

3) Pro: Same goes for cognitive disorders

Coffee consumption has also long been associated with decreased risks of cognitive impairments like dementia, most notably Alzheimer's disease. A study conducted in 2009, which followed regular coffee-drinkers for 20 years, found that out of 1400 people, those who reported drinking 3—4 cups of coffee per day were 65% less likely to develop dementia and Alzheimer's disease than those who drank 2 cups or fewer.

2) Toss-up : It makes you have to poop
We've all been there. You've just sat down at your breakfast table or favorite coffee shop. You're a few sips into your brew, when the urge to go comes out of nowhere; it can seriously feel like you just mainlined a laxative. (Which is a con, unless you just really need to go; some people even use coffee for enemas, in which case it's definitely a good idea to let it cool off first.)

The basic reason behind why this occurs is that coffee is a stimulant, and one of the things it happens to stimulate is peristalsis — the wave-like muscle contractions in your gastrointestinal tract.

What's interesting, though, is that a lot of people experience the need to go number two only with coffee (but not with, say, energy drinks); and experience the effect with decaffeinated brews, as well. What's more, the urge to go likely comes on too quickly to be directly caused by caffeine alone. According to a study published in the journal Gut:

The speed at which the response occurs (within four minutes after drinking the coffee) suggests an indirect action on the colon as it seems unlikely that coffee would reach the colon in this time either via the intestinal lumen or the blood stream. We suspect that coffee may induce a "gastrocolonic response" by acting on epithelial receptors in the stomach or small bowel. Such a mechanism could be mediated by neural mechanisms or by gastrointestinal hormones. Coffee has been shown to promote release of Gastrin which can increase colonic spike and motor activity.

1) Toss up: Drink coffee, see ghosts?
Seriously. A study conducted at Durham University in 2009 found that people who consumed at least 315 mg of caffeine (about three cups of brewed coffee) a day were three times more likely to hallucinate than more conservative coffee-drinkers. Seeing things, hearing voices, and sensing the presence of ghosts were among the experiences reported by test participants and tallied as "hallucinatory" by the researchers.

According to the researchers, the ultimate question is this: are the hallucinations a result of the coffee-drinking, or is the coffee something hallucinators flock to as a way to help them cope with their experiences?

At least one study, conducted by researcher Harold Koenigsberg back in 1993, seems to support the plausibility of the former conclusion. Koenigsberg and his colleagues discovered that caffeine, delivered intravenously to test participants during their sleep, had the curious effect of inducing olfactory hallucinations; when test participants awoke, they reported experiencing a variety of strange smells. One participant even reported experiencing a scent like that of "plastic or burnt coffee."

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Hired: Urban Meyer as coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes football team. Meyer had previously gone 65-15 with two championships as coach of Florida...

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/campusrivalry/post/2011/11/urban-meyer-ohio-state-coach-luke-fickell

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RIP

Andrea True, 70s porn starlet & singer of the disco hit "More, More, More":

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/andrea-true-dead-at-68-20111123


From Tor.com:

Anne McCaffrey, legendary SF and fantasy author best known for her Dragonriders of Pern series, has passed away. Random House has confirmed on Tuesday that McCaffrey died of a stroke at her home in Ireland on Monday, November 21.

McCaffrey was the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction, the first woman to win a Nebula Award, and the first author to hit the New York Times bestseller list with an SF title (The White Dragon).


Australian BMX rider Dane Searls:

http://msn.foxsports.com/other/story/Extreme-BMX-rider-Dane-Searls-dies-after-balcony-fall-in-Australia-112411


Ken Russell, director of films such as Tommy and Altered States:

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2011/11/28/ken-russell-the-king-of-purple-passion

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