ALL AMERICANS WHO PARTICIPATE in secret Bilderberg meetings are criminals and traitors. The Logan Act expressly forbids U.S. citizens to negotiate public policy with representatives of foreign governments. Thus, American officials and private citizens who participate are lawbreaking criminals.
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/bilderbergers_are_criminals_17.html
Friday, April 24, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
SABRINA
by: Lucretia Davidson (1808-1825)
A VOLCANIC ISLAND, WHICH APPEARED AND DISAPPEARED AMONG THE AZORES, IN 1811.
SLE of the ocean, say, whence comest thou?
The smoke thy dark throne, and the blaze round thy brow;
The voice of the earthquake proclaims thee abroad,
And the deep, at thy coming, rolls darkly and loud.
From the breast of the ocean, the bed of the wave,
Thou hast burst into being, hast sprung from the grave;
A stranger, wild, gloomy, yet terribly bright,
Thou art clothed with the darkness, yet crowned with the light.
Thou comest in flames, thou hast risen in fire;
The wave is thy pillow, the tempest thy choir;
They will lull thee to sleep on the ocean's broad breast,
A slumb'ring volcano, an earthquake at rest.
Thou hast looked on the isle — thou hast looked on the wave —
Then hie thee again to thy deep, watery grave;
Go, quench thee in ocean, thou dark, nameless thing,
Thou spark from the fallen one's wide flaming wing.
A VOLCANIC ISLAND, WHICH APPEARED AND DISAPPEARED AMONG THE AZORES, IN 1811.
SLE of the ocean, say, whence comest thou?
The smoke thy dark throne, and the blaze round thy brow;
The voice of the earthquake proclaims thee abroad,
And the deep, at thy coming, rolls darkly and loud.
From the breast of the ocean, the bed of the wave,
Thou hast burst into being, hast sprung from the grave;
A stranger, wild, gloomy, yet terribly bright,
Thou art clothed with the darkness, yet crowned with the light.
Thou comest in flames, thou hast risen in fire;
The wave is thy pillow, the tempest thy choir;
They will lull thee to sleep on the ocean's broad breast,
A slumb'ring volcano, an earthquake at rest.
Thou hast looked on the isle — thou hast looked on the wave —
Then hie thee again to thy deep, watery grave;
Go, quench thee in ocean, thou dark, nameless thing,
Thou spark from the fallen one's wide flaming wing.
Disinformation in Ufology
| Columnist: William B Stoecker | |||||
|
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
A Rolls-Royce Knock-Off From China
Geely GE.While Rolls-Royce did have some news at the Shanghai auto show, it was largely overshadowed by the debut of a Chinese automaker's interpretation of a Rolls, the Geely GE.
If and when the GE comes to market in China, it would be sold under Geely's Englon luxury marque. By all accounts the limo is a shameless (if not slightly shorter in length) knock-off of the Rolls-Royce Phantom and might look more at home parked on Canal Street in Manhattan's Chinatown.
From Autocar:
The 5.4 metre prototype, painted black and given pride of place on a raised plinth in the middle of Geely's huge stand, makes obvious reference to the Rolls in the shape of its cabin, windows and down-sloping rear deck.
However, its nose, beneath which is mounted a 3.5 litre V6, is considerably shorter than the Rolls's.
The 'Grecian temple' grille is close to being a Rolls copy, though, and it is topped by a figure which seems to draw much influence from Rolls-Royce's traditional spirit of ecstasy, except that the figure slopes backwards.
The GE brings back memories of the 2007 Frankfurt auto show, where Shuanghuan, another Chinese automaker, presented an S.U.V. that was strikingly similar to the BMW X5.
According to Jalopnik, though, the GE distinguishes itself from a Rolls-Royce on the inside, where there is only one "throne-like" rear seat.Eruditio et institutio in bonas artes,homines humani vs homines barbari, conflict returns in new intense forms,the left must rethink rights.
Sheephogan™
Sunday, April 19, 2009
13 (14) Alien Languages You Can Actually Read They forgot English!
13 Alien Languages You Can Actually Read
Inventing an alien language? Easy. Creating an entire writing system to go along with it? Now that's impressive. Here are thirteen alien alphabets (complete with downloadable fonts!) you should totally use to write your novel.
But first, a couple quick notes. There are obviously way more examples of alien writing systems out there, but these are all ones that have been "deciphered" such that we can actually write in them. There are some major alien languages that remain mysterious, including the Gallifreyan omegabet, which allegedly has millions of characters. I've provided links to fonts based on these alphabets; if you don't know how to install fonts on your computer, here is a handy guide. With that out of the way, and following a brief but very honorable mention to J.R.R. Tolkien's Tengwar script from Lord of the Rings, let's get started on some alien alphabets...
1-2. Alienese I and II, Futurama
As part of their truly gargantuan effort to make the 31st century a fully realized universe, series creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen (well, mainly David X. Cohen) created Alienese, an alien alphabet that was primarily used to write humorous graffiti in the background of scenes. The alphabet has precisely the same twenty-six letters and base ten number system as English , and the writers didn't create an Alienese language to go along with the alphabet, so everything it said was in English (the main point of Alienese was to do in-jokes, after all). All of this allowed Futurama fans to decipher the alphabet within about thirty minutes of the show's premiere, forcing the writing staff to come up with a more fiendish challenge, which became Alienese II.
Instead of the simple letter substitution of the first alphabet, this second alphabet uses a modular addition system, where the symbol to represent a given character changes based on the letter before it. Here's how it would work in English: say you want to write "Fry." First assign each letter of the alphabet the numerical value that is one less than their position in it, so A = 0 and Z = 25 (the reasons you have to do this are too complicated and boring to go into). You first choose the fifth letter, which of course is "F." For "R", the seventeenth letter, you combine the values of "F" and "R", which is 5 + 17 = 22, which means you use "W." With "Y", you add 24 to 22, which gives you 46. Since there are only 26 letters, you subtract 46 - 26 = 20, and so the final letter is "U". Thus "Fry" is spelled the equivalent of "Fwu" in Alienese II. Oh, and don't worry - none of the rest of these alphabets are even remotely this complicated.
You can download the fonts here (although you'll have to do your own addition with Alienese II). You can also instantly convert between English and either language here. If you're still a bit confused about modular addition, you can check out a more detailed primer here.
3. Ancient, Stargate
After the insanity of Alienese II, here's a nice straightforward alphabet used by the Ancients on Stargate. It's a fairly close phonetic match for the English alphabet, although "f" and "u" are represented by the same character, so there are only 25 letters total. Supposedly, the letters can take on new meanings when written upside-down. As far as numbers go, the Ancients actually used a Base 8 system, but they invented two additional numerals so that they could more easily deal with races that used a decimal system. There are no symbols for punctuation in the Ancient alphabet. The makers of Stargate were somewhat inconsistent in how they used the alphabet, occasionally writing context-appropriate messages in English, but more often simply using the language for in-jokes.
Download the alphabet here. And, because I'm trying to encourage this sort of thing, here is a link to the Gospel of Matthew transliterated into the Ancient alphabet.
4. Ath, Crest of the Stars by Morioka Hiroyuki
This Japanese science fiction trilogy, along with its sequel Banner of the Stars, dealt with the Abh, an interstellar but strongly feudal race that was originally bioengineered by a highly nationalist faction in far future Japan. They speak Baronh, a language based on ancient Japanese. Created as slaves, the Abh at first had no written language, but upon gaining their freedom created Ath, a relatively independent alphabet that nevertheless had some basis in Japanese kana scripts.
You can get the font here.
5. Interlac, DC Comics
In the 30 century era of the Legion of Superheroes, Interlac is the common constructed language of the United Planets. Considering the hugely diverse backgrounds of the Legion and their penchant for fighting evil on faraway alien planets, a lingua franca like Interlac is a very real necessity. Although the language was first used in a 1969 issue of Adventure Comics, it wasn't until 1984 that Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen standardized the alphabet into the consistent set that it is today. Recently, the titles of the five JLA and JSA books that made up the Lightning Saga were written in Interlac. And, in a sign of great cosmic respect, the Guardians use Interlac to write the Book of Oa.
Download the font here.
6-8. The Klingon Alphabets, Star Trek
Klingon is probably the most famous science fiction language. Developed by linguist Marc Okrand for the Star Trek movies, Klingon is officially written using our alphabet. However, Klingon ships often have markings on them that clearly look like letters, which has led Klingon enthusiasts to search for a proper Klingon alphabet. This came when an unidentified figure from Paramount used the letters seen on the show to make an alphabet, which he or she then sent to the Klingon Language Institute. This alphabet, known as pIqaD, does not have a set correspondence between its letters and the English alphabet equivalents. The Institute has proposed the mapping seen above, but official sources say this is incorrect.
A more official, albeit more bizarre, Klingon alphabet was originally developed by the Astra Image Corporation for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. These were also later used for the Skybox trading cards made for The Next Generation. Although there are still 26 phonetic values, just like in English, there are now only ten letters, meaning various characters double, triple, and sometimes quadruple up in possible meanings. This of course means that many words, some with directly opposite meanings, will look identical. Nevertheless, this alphabet is the one most often used by Star Trek production teams when adding Klingon lettering.
Finally, there is the so-called Klinzhai script, which comes from The U.S.S. Enterprise Officer's Manual, published in 1980. Based on concept art and other fragments seen in The Original Series, the alphabet has the major disadvantage of being formalized before Marc Okrand constructed the Klingon language, making it difficult to correlate with what is now "known" about the sounds of the Klingon language.
Get the first pIqaD here along with several other Star Trek alphabets of varying degrees of officialness. Unfortunately, I can't find a font for the second pIqaD. You can download Klinzhai here. And, for the Star Trek fan who has everything except a Klingon keyboard, here is a Klingon keyboard.
9. Kryptonese, DC Comics
Kryptonese automatically gets points because it's the only writing system on this list that's a syllabary, not an alphabet. It grew out of several fan letters that attempted to rationalize the various squiggles used in the fifties and sixties to represent the language of Superman's destroyed home planet Krypton. Exasperated by the barrage of letters, DC editor E. Nelson Bridwell tried to end the unsolicited alphabets by explaining in one issue that Kryptonese actually had 118 letters. In a development that should stand as a lasting tribute to linguistic geekiness, Bridwell immediately started receiving proposals for 118-character Kryptonese alphabets. Bridwell, himself a lover of trivial minutiae, decided if the job was to be done, he really should be the one to do it, and set about combing through old comics to find 118 unique squiggles that he could designate as the various sounds of Kryptonese. Although this exercise was, of course, completely arbitrary, the end result was the massive syllabary you see above.
Unfortunately, there are currently no fonts available online for Kryptonese, partially because its non-alphabetical nature would make it difficult for most keyboards. But here is a great site covering its history and mechanics.
10. Kryptonian, DC Comics
One of the many things removed from continuity by Johnny Bryne's Man of Steel reboot was Kryptonese. In its place came Kryptonian, which was a 26 letter alphabet that simply corresponded with the English alphabet. This new alphabet was introduced in 2000, and ever since any Kryptonian you might see in comics (the current World of New Krypton arc has a bunch of examples) are English phrases transliterated into Kryptonian. This also allowed the comics to finish the task of justifying why there's a big "S" on Superman's costume, as the Kryptonian "S" sort of looks like the Man of Tomorrow's symbol. (It's also a symbol of hope on Krypton.) And to think I had simply assumed the "S" just stood for Superman.
Get the font here. You can also go here to check out a truly wondrous attempt to go beyond a simple letter substitution scheme and create a complete, linguistically consistent Kryptonian, complete with nine vowels and twenty-four consonants.
11. Mandalorian, Star Wars
The Mandalorians are best known as the warrior culture that trained Jango Fett and provided the inspiration for both the Fett family's armor and that of the Clone Troopers. In the Expanded Universe books, the Mandalorians have been developed as a fearsome third faction in the war between Jedi and Sith, sometimes following the Sith, but more often content to auction off their deadly services to the highest bidder. Karen Traviss, author of the Star Wars: Republic Commando series, is currently working on developing the Mandalorian language, Mando'a, into a fully functional language. The alphabet you see above comes from the Visual Dictionary companion to Attack of the Clones.
You can download it here.
12. Marain, The Culture books by Iain M. Banks
Banks's series considers the Culture, a utopian society where various alien societies have been brought together in relative harmony under the benign governance of the Minds, a set of highly sophisticated AI. The Minds considered language a vital part of ensuring peace between species, and so they created Marain, a new language with no clear connections to any previously extant tongue. For the Marain alphabet, the Minds used binary as an inspiration, using a 3x3 grid of nine circles, with each circle either blackened or left blank. Lines were then drawn between the dots to construct the symbol, as can be seen in the chart above. Although there could theoretically be as many as 512 unique characters in the Marain alphabet, these 32 symbols in particular were chosen because then can be rotated and flipped without looking like any of the others, making all of them completely unique and distinguishable.
Download the font here under the entry for December 21. For a more comprehensive explanation from Banks as to how the Marain writing system works, go here.
13. Zentradi, The Super Dimension Fortress Macross
This anime series from the early eighties concerned first contact between humans and the Zentradi, giant humanoids created eons ago by a mysterious protoculture to serve as their galactic warriors. The series's creators, Studio Nue, constructed a Zentradi alphabet for the TV series, which they then supplemented with a full-fledged Zentradi language for the followup movie.
You can get the font here.
We need a purely mathematical universal language that can be uttered by all sentient beings in some way or another.
Eruditio et institutio in bonas artes,homines humani vs homines barbari, conflict returns in new intense forms,the left must rethink rights.
Sheephogan™
Sent from Pahrump, Nevada, United States
Humans Losing Touch with Nature
Humans Losing Touch with Nature
posted: 01 April 2009 05:51 pm ET
With so much of life based on electronic representations of reality, humans risk losing touch with nature, says University of Washington psychologist Peter Kahn.
From web cams that offer views of wildlife to virtual tours of the Grand Canyon to robotic pets, modern technology increasingly is encroaching into human connections with the natural world. Kahn and his colleagues believe this intrusion may emerge as one of the central psychological problems of our times.
"We are a technological species, but we also need a deep connection with nature in our lives," Kahn argues.
Human-Robot Mergers
What the future holds, for better or worse.
Writing in the current issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, Kahn and two of his graduate students, Rachel Severson and Jolina Ruckert, look at the psychological effects of interacting with various forms of technological nature and explore humanity's growing estrangement from nature.
The researchers cite earlier experiments conducted by Kahn's laboratory, one with a plasma display "window" and several with AIBO, a robotic dog. The plasma window study showed that people recovered better from low-level stress by looking at an actual view of nature rather than seeing the same real-time high-definition television scene displayed on a plasma window.
"What do we compare technology to? If we compare it to no nature, technological nature works pretty well," Kahn said. "But if we compare it to actual nature, it doesn't seem to provide as many psychological benefits."
The AIBO studies showed that children were in some ways treating the robots as other beings. But compared to interacting with a real dog, their interactions with AIBO were not as social or deep.
"Robot and virtual pets are beginning to replace children's interactions with biologically live pets," Ruckert said. "The larger concern is that technological nature will shift the baseline of what people perceive as the full human experience of nature, and that it will contribute to what we call environmental generational amnesia."
This concept of amnesia proposes that people believe the natural environment they encounter during childhood is the norm, against which they measure environmental degradation later in their life. The problem with this is that each generation takes that degraded condition as a non-degraded baseline and is generally oblivious of changes and damages inflicted by previous generations.
"Poor air quality is a good example of physical degradation," said Kahn. "We can choke on the air, and some people suffer asthma, but we tend to think that's a pretty normal part of the human condition.
"Some people get the idea on one level if they are interested in environmental issues," Severson said. "They see the degradation, but they don't recognize their own experience is diminished. How many people today feel a loss such as the damming of the Columbia River compared to a wild Columbia River? A lot of us have no concept of it as a wild river and don't feel a loss."
Kahn likened the situation to the effort to convince people that climate change is a serious challenge. But unlike climate change, the threat posed by technological nature, isn't right in our faces.
"People might think that if technological nature is partly good that that's good enough," he said. "But it's not. Because across generations what will happen is that the good enough will become the good. If we don't change course, it will impoverish us as a species.
Eruditio et institutio in bonas artes,homines humani vs homines barbari, conflict returns in new intense forms,the left must rethink rights.
Sheephogan™
Sent from Pahrump, Nevada, United States
Guns: A better buy than stocks
Guns: A better buy than stocks
Posted Apr 16 2009, 12:20 PM by Todd Harrison
Forget stocks and bonds, the real money's in guns.
The Wall Street Journal reports artillery enthusiasts are stocking up on guns and ammo, not necessarily ahead of widespread civil unrest resulting from our ongoing economic swoon, but as an investment. These trigger-happy speculators are betting President Obama will institute a ban on assault rifles, which would crimp supply and send prices, well, shooting up.
For it's part, the Obama administration says it has no plans to enact such legislation and supports the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
During the federal ban on semiautomatic weapons from 1994-2004, prices soared. Recent buying has reached almost a frenzied pitch, creating backlogs for popular models and enabling resellers to list certain guns well above suggested retail prices. AK-47s doubled in price between September 2008 and the end of last year.
Ammo, as well, has become a hot commodity. As one supplier said, "(Ammunition) beats the hell out of money markets and CDs. You can double your investment in ammunition in a year."
Equity investors, too, are betting on Americans arming themselves to the teeth. Smith & Wesson (SWHC), maker of Dirty Harry's weapon of choice -- the .44 Magnum -- has seen its stock jump from around $2 per share to over $6 since Inauguration Day. Still, shares are off around 70% from highs seen as recently as late 2007. Sturm Ruger (RGR), another gun manufacturer, has seen a rise of almost 100% in 2009.
As Minyanville's Kevin Depew is apt to say, "These are heady times we are living in." The Journal running a front-page story on buying guns rather than stocks is indicative of just how strange things have become.
Recent volatility in financial markets is driving Americans to seek alternative ways to protect -- and even grow -- their money. And while we're yet to see widespread construction of bunkers, protective trenches or armed militias patrolling the streets, the country is on edge to an extent not witnessed since September 2001.
I mean, pirates are all over the news, for God's sake. Pirates!
Eruditio et institutio in bonas artes,homines humani vs homines barbari, conflict returns in new intense forms,the left must rethink rights.
Sheephogan™
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