Info Rhapsody

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

These are some collection of informative pages i've read.

Line-crossing ceremony . It showcases the predator nature of male human animals, and a bound-forming ritual that prepares it. Generally known as Hazing.

A look at gangs. Crips

Look at the historical cases of scam: Scam

I was eating Jiaozi (Chinese dumplings), and we ususally eat it with soy source and vinegar. (and garlic) The vinegar we have, tastes rather extremely diluted. Me and my brother thought we'll just add more, but adding more vinegar dilutes the soy source so much so that it is not a solution.

This vinegar is sharply different from what we used to in Taiwan. In Taiwan, a drop of vinegar is like a drop of lemon juice, extremely sour. While the US vinegar (bought in a local supermarket at Safeway (Mountain View, California)), are very diluted that one can eat a teaspoonful without shivering.

We noticed that there's a 10% acidity printed on the label of the vinegar. We wondered what is the acidity percentage in the vinegars we had in Taiwan.

[Academic freedom again By Michael Bérubé. At http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/comments/963/ , accessed on 2011-08-26 ] Michael is teacher of literature and cultural studies at Penn State University

J. M. Coetzee (born 1940) Nobel Laureate in literature in 2003. Among his publications is The Lives of Animals.

clothing, fashion: ruff

A ruff is an item of clothing worn in Western Europe from the mid-sixteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century.

The ruff, which was worn by men, women and children, evolved from the small fabric ruffle at the drawstring neck of the shirt or chemise. They served as changeable pieces of cloth that could themselves be laundered separately while keeping the wearer's doublet from becoming soiled at the neckline.

Ruff (clothing)

marbles 97063
Marble (toy)

[The Political Brain By Michael Shermer. At http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=000CE155-1061-1493-906183414B7F0162 ]

A recent brain-imaging study shows that our political predilections are a product of unconscious confirmation bias.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion … draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises … in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate. -- Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, 1620

Sex. Secret Museum, Naples

consensual sexual and torture, homicide, cannibalism

Sharon Rina Lopatka (September 20, 1961 to October 16, 1996) was an Internet entrepreneur in Hampstead, Maryland, United States, who was killed in a case of apparent consensual homicide. Lopatka was tortured and strangled to death on October 16, 1996, by Robert Frederick Glass, a computer analyst from North Carolina. The apparent purpose was mutual sexual gratification. The case became the earliest widely publicized example of a consensual homicide mediated through the use of the Internet.

Sharon Lopatka

Armin Meiwes (English pronunciation: /ˈɑrmɪn ˈmaɪvəs/; born 1 December 1961) is a German man who achieved international notoriety for killing and eating a voluntary victim whom he had found via the Internet. After Meiwes and the victim jointly attempted to eat the victim's severed penis, Meiwes killed his victim and proceeded to eat a large amount of his flesh.[2] Because of his acts, Meiwes is also known as the Rotenburg Cannibal or Der Metzgermeister (The Master Butcher). His main occupation was working as a computer repair technician.

Armin Meiwes

[Mob Rule: In departmental disputes, professors can act just like animals By John Gravois. At http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i32/32a01001.htm , accessed on 2011-08-26 ]

Some football issues.

Stephen King stuff i've read in the late 1980s.

Novel fantasy:

[ANNALS OF PSYCHOLOGY, THE NAKED FACE, Can you read people's thoughts just by looking at them? By Malcolm Gladwell. At http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_08_05_a_face.htm]

Links:

Links: Greek

Link: Funny mechanical assembly line. Done in animated gif. [Blue Ball Machine By Earthbounder. At http://blueballfixed.ytmnd.com/ , accessed on 2011-08-26 ]

Theodore Kaczynski, author of Industrial Society and its Future has published a allegory Ship Of Fools (1999). Now there is a play by Gardar Eide Einarsson based on it. See:

[Performance / Ship of Fools / Gardar Eide Einarsson At http://www.swissinstitute.net/News/2006/shipoffools.htm]

[Ship of Fools By Ted Kaczynski. At http://www.chicagoabc.org/ship_of_fools.htm , accessed on 2011-08-26 ]

Oliver Stone film director

William Oliver Stone (born September 15, 1946) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer and military veteran. Stone came to public prominence between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s for writing and directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, in which he had participated as an infantry soldier. Many of Stone's films focus on controversial American political and cultural issues and conspiracies during the late 20th century and early 21st century.

Stone's films often combine different camera and film formats within a single scene as evidenced in JFK, Natural Born Killers, and Nixon.[2] Stone has received three Academy Awards for his work on the films Midnight Express, Platoon, and Born on the Fourth of July. He was presented with the Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award at the 2007 Austin Film Festival.

Oliver Stone

The Maunsell Forts were small fortified towers built in the Thames and Mersey estuaries during the Second World War to help defend the United Kingdom.

Maunsell Sea Forts

• Paper planes. Designed by John Collins. Flash application by C Lowe. http://www.lowe-tech.com/portfolio/paperplanes.asp

A journalist's right to protect their confidential sources isn't absolute. It goes without saying that any failure to honor a promise of confidentiality would make it harder in the future to persuade a frightened government employee to talk about corruption in high places or a worried worker to reveal corporate crimes. Nevertheless, protecting the identities of confidential sources is a journalistic right that should be recognised by the courts, but only when it protects genuine whistle-blowers, not when it shields government or corporate wrongdoing. Thus, if someone breaks the law by giving information to a journalist, or reveals to a journalist that they have committed a crime, the journalist has to be able to argue that in that specific case, protecting the source's identity serves the public more than bringing the source to trial.

[A New Sense of Justice By John Horvath. At http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/21/21827/1.html , accessed on 2011-08-26 ]

• Do you know how's the internet connected across continents? From China to Europe to North America to Australia? It it by satellite? No, it is by cables laid under the ocean. How do you lay cables thousands of kilometers on the ocean floor? Y'known, oceans are some tens of kilometers deep. And, how you gonna maintain it? Won't sharks eat it off and germs rot it out? Well, that is one showcase of the technology of human animals of today. See bottom of: http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/casa/martin/atlas/cables.html for world undersea internet cable maps.

• Sex. Human Walking Motion http://www.biomotionlab.ca/Demos/BMLwalker.html

Infibulation Explained

[Infibulation Explained (~1999) By Robert Pinkerton. At http://www.lockmeup.com/cb/facts/pinkerton-infibulation.html] (Local copy: Infibulation Explained)

Infibulation

Mark Twain's work: Letters from the Earth

knowledge fantasy:

I learned from artist Trevor Brown about Jeff Noon's novel Automated Alice Buy at amazon. Highly recommended by Trevor Brown. For more about Jeff Noon, see: Jeff Noon

• A map of world's telephones throughout 1990s: [Telephones By Matthew White. At http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/phones.htm , accessed on 2015-05-05 ]

• A map of human animals's killings caused by and for human animals. [Wars and Atrocities in the Second Quarter of the Twentieth Century By Matthew White. At http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/war-1950.htm , accessed on 2015-05-05 ]

knowledge fantasy:

[Democracies Do Not Make War on One Another. …or Do They? By Matthew White. At http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/demowar.htm , accessed on 2015-05-05 ]

• the word Eurasian reminds me of beautiful exotic women. Eurasian

• Grandeur. Duomo di Milano

• there are too many human animals. What is the most efficient and ecological way to dispose them? incinerate them? dump to sea? feed it to dogs? i have come to tentative conclusion that the best way to dispose corpse is feed it to carnivores. When i'm dead, that's what i want. Theoretically i can't possibly care. Burial at sea

what exactly are Jews? They don't seems black, or blonde, or Oriental, or particularlly Middle East looking people with turbans etc. It turns out, it's less of a race, but ethnicity. See Jew.

Do you believe in God? If you do and he doesn't exist, nothing happens. If you don't and he exists, you are damned! Thus, you better believe. Thus goes Pascal's Wager.

and did you know that one can prove by mathematical logic that being omniscient has obvious disadvantages?

Colin Powell (born 1937). Commendable man.

Condoleezza Rice (born 1954)

• We know more about the surace of the moon than the surface of deep oceans Challenger Deep

• Check out this DVD: “The Blue Planet - Seas of Life”, absolutely fascinating. But it at Buy at amazon. Creatures of unknown faces lie in the abyss.

US should put its research money in oceanography instead of Mars.

In 1963, a US nuclear submarine is sunk 350 km east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA. (that's roughly north-east of New York.) USS Thresher (SSN-593)

In 1968, a US nuclear submarine is sunk 650 km southwest of the Azores. (that's in the ballpark of middle of Atlantic Ocean, roughly the latitude of New York.) USS Scorpion (SSN-589)

These are not trivial sinkings. They are nuclear accidents.

Non-USA GPS; Hooray!: GALILEO positioning system

some of my countrymen want to dictate the world, and want to do it in the guise of justice. Fuck them.

today's encyclopedia rapture:

wikipedia fantasy today:

I visited the Natinoal Mall of Washington DC, USA today. I took the metro. It was great. I always liked to visit subways in a new city. It kinda gives me a hint of the technological level and social scape of the place. I was on foot for 5 hours. Walking around the Washington Mall.

One thing interesting is that the art and science associated Smithsonian Institution is actually a US federal government institution. It was a gift of some random joe James Smithson (1765 to 1829) to the US.

The tourists attractive National Mall in Washington DC.

James Smithson, the cause of the US Federal Goverment's Smithsonian Institution

National Air and Space Museum, part of the Smithsonian Institution

Washington Monument, the ostensible obelisk in the US Capitol.

A list of towers in the world. List of towers

The subway in Washington DC, USA. Washington Metro

Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God. Buy at amazon, a derring-do.