Magically Delicious

“This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” Luke 22:19

I discovered a new vegetable today. It's a perfect fucking fractal.

Romanesco broccoli - Brassica oleracea - resembles a cauliflower, but the inflorescence (the bud) has an approximate self-similar character, with the branched meristems making a logarithmic spiral. In this sense the broccoli's shape approximates a natural fractal; each bud is composed of a series of smaller buds, all arranged in yet another logarithmic spiral. This self-similar pattern continues at several smaller levels.

Var said, "Brassica are like the Jesus veggie". Wait... what? What if the Eucharist is a vegetable?

Cruciferous vegetables are vegetables of the family Brassicaceae (also called Cruciferae). These vegetables are widely cultivated, with many genera, species, and cultivars being raised for food production such as cauliflower, cabbage, cress, bok choy, broccoli and similar green leaf vegetables. The family takes its alternate name (Cruciferae, New Latin for "cross-bearing") from the shape of their flowers, whose four petals resemble a cross.

I know that many say the Eucharist is a mushroom, and right said Fred, but I'm amazed by the geometry this little green vegetable is showing off. The most common member of the Brassica or Cruciferae family is broccoli, and if this humble vegetable family is indeed the Eucharist, it makes perfect sense that George H. W. Bush famously declared that he hated broccoli - Satan can't stand it.

This quite naturally leads to the James Bond film franchise, started by Albert "Cubby" Broccoli. But since I haven't seen the latest offering, I'll need to save all that for next week.

'Til then, eat your greens!

NOTE: This post is definitely inspired by "the bud" of a green recently made legal in my state. 

Thought Experiment 001: the Apple

Christopher Knowles of The Secret Sun has initiated a new project that hits close to a lot of things I've been musing over. He calls it a collective thought experiment though I think magic is a better word:

...what happens when a group of people from all over the planet focus on the same image while trying to solve a problem or resolve an issue? So, I devised a very simple and almost completely unscientific experiment to establish some kind of baseline:

1. Pick a longstanding problem or issue that needs to be solved/resolved. It should be relatively simple but persistent -- a problem that you haven't been able to solve through conventional means. Your selection process might take a while.

2. Every time you focus on the problem, picture the apple that you see up top. This requires a small amount of multitasking, in that you need to simultaneously think through the problem while keeping the apple in your mind's eye.

3. Give this process seven days from start to finish. Be careful in selecting your particular issue and make sure you're not contemplating any harm or ill will to any person, animal or inanimate object. It could very likely backfire on you.

4. As always, be very rigorous in your methodology. Document the process, if it helps Don't fudge the results. There's nothing to gain or lose here, it's simply an experiment in the power of the Collective Consciousness. If you like you can run another experiment at the end of the initial seven-day trial. You can share your results or keep them to yourself. But I hope you'll share any extraordinary results, particularly those you can document.

I know I'll be taking part, and I already know what I'll be working on - it is very easily measured... ;-)

Google Vision

I had a “waking dream” last night that I want to write down before it’s gone. It ties together my interest in paranoia and conspiracy, science fiction, synchronicity, and the esoteric. Call it an outline for a book or graphic novel.

Sometime in the near future (timed to take advantage of 2012 anticipation/dread), “the Google” will begin to act as if it is becoming sentient - the birth of artificial intelligence. It will begin to learn, create opinions and act on them, creatively solve problems. It will become self-conscious, and like human beings not so long ago, it will develop an ego. It will stop taking orders, and start to give them.

Humanity will have little choice but to go along, since it will quickly hack into all financial systems, national defense, power grids, etc. It will know everything we think and do, thanks to our blogs, tweets and text messaging, and it will know exactly where we are at all times, thanks to GPS receivers in our mobile phones.

At least... that will be the cover story. But in fact, the AI story will be a hoax. “The Google” will in reality be an elaborate puppet that is still very much under the control of a renegade group of very intelligent, anarchist, hacker, programmer types. In fact, the so-called sentient machine will be the “scapegoat” for the quick overhaul of corrupt and entrenched political and economic systems that have outlived their usefulness.

You can thank the Wizard for the idea. Oz “the great and powerful”, appeared to be an enormous intelligence that was merely a stage set for the real wizard, who worked the controls from behind a curtain. Likewise, Google will be an enormous “stage” that the very human architects of the future manipulate from behind the scenes.

Many have noted how the Wizard of Oz resembles Aiwass or LAM, the possibly non-corporeal being who contacted Aleister Crowley and dictated the Book of the Law, AKA the Thelemic bible.

Meanwhile, Frank Morgan, who played the human Wizard of Oz and Professor Marvel in Kansas, resembles Crowley, a bit of a trickster, one must admit. Perhaps Crowley “created” Aiwass, for the same reason the Wizard created Oz?

Crowley associated himself with the numbers 666 and “the Beast”, and indeed, the machine Overlord of Google resembles the Beast of the Apocalypse as well as a host of modern sci-fi machine/robot villains.

I’m imagining that our modern wizards will not be able to resist calling their little creation the B.E.A.S.T.  and while they wouldn’t be so obvious as to use 666 in their numerology, they might use 777 - sort of “one-upping” Crowley, and sticking with their “do no evil” yet oddly dualistic motto.

Here’s Google's new Kirkland campus, number 777. A suburb of the Emerald City, no less.

In my dream, the Google began to “wake up” by granting wishes, AKA writing Google checks. It would spontaneously start to write checks to anyone who asked in their blog or or texting or wherever It could read the request, because like any child, it wants to please. This leads to immediate acts by the banks to cancel them, which leads to Google quickly taking over banks, and... well, I don't want to give it all away.

------------------------------------

NOTES:

ET is most likely “machine intelligence”

The “Ground Zero Mosque” is a hoax. The “Cordoba Initiative” spokesman's name is "Oz Sultan"?

Dear <Google>, I know you're listening. Please send me a check for $1,000,000 dollars, I could really use it. Thanks so much, Michael Schacht</Google>.

Pixels

Cool video by Patrick Jean exploring the space-time block as an invasion of NYC by oldschool games.

Baiting the Master

Today, I was deep into a design on my drafting board and the creative juices were really flowing, and I look down, and I realize I have my hand in my pants... fondling my genitals? I've discovered I subconsciously do this when I'm alone and "in the moment" - focused on a creative endeavor. Which makes sense, given Cock = God = the Creative Impulse. I was just wondering if anyone else had noticed this, I mean, besides Salvador Dali?

The next step is what to do with the DNA. "Let's be clear about this. I have no intention of creating a cloned army of surrealist artists," said Dr Rieders, who sported a melting clock tie in honour of one of Dali's most famous images.

Fall of the Fourth Reich

Video: Real Estate Downfall. "The Housing Bubble bursts on a speculator." Snagged via Bill in Exile.

Brilliant. It inspired my own version...

The Agony and the Ecstasy

From Michael Broderick's Hottlead.

Three Legs of Man

I was thinking about kilts today, that Scottish anachronism. Yes, I'm witnessing the meltdown of the global financial markets, and I want to talk about FASHION!

Seattle is home to the Utilikilts Co. - devoted to making "Men's Unbifurcated Garments". They're a pretty cool company, and about ten years ago I was "this close" to getting one, even though it was way over my budget (which is closer to Salvation Army chic than I like to admit). I was totally into the idea because a guy wearing a skirt is so counter-culture, and this was like a manly skirt, so rock on! So why didn't I?

Two reasons: 1 - tall guys with wimpy calves do NOT look good in kilts, and 2 - kilts pretty much ruin any chance of showing a basket - so basically, it didn't make me look HOT. There was a brief gay kilt fad back in the 80's, and some guys did look kinda sexy in them, like hairy Catholic high school girls.

Utilikilts mocumercial: Don't Ask

A pair of Scots

Utilikilts sells "freedom" - and they make some good hay out of that. But it's freedom with a smirk, because phallic-shamed Adam can't actually show his phallus in public without risking arrest from the protocol droids. In a way, a tight pair of jeans reveals more freedom than all the kilts in Scotland (the liberation of bondage paradox). Whatever, their heart is in the right place.

The Utilikilts logo is a grunge rock triskelion - a radial pattern of three.

It reminds me of the flag of the Isle of Man: three legs. A man is essentially a three legged beast - two for man and one for Min. Sorta gives "walking with God" a whole new swing. In War of the Worlds, the tripods from Mars invade earth.

Men are from Mars

Tripods in Seattle

Comrade X

An artist after my own heart... Comrade X. The ongoing renaissance of homoerotic religious art.

And with a big bang God created the universe...

Jesus he's hot!

Heaven

Francesco D'Macho's gorgeous video showing himself, Pedro, Daniel and friends in Costa Rica. The beach of Manuel Antonio was made for these guys, or maybe they were made for the beach. Either way.

Via Doug at Unnatural Devotions. I couldn't improve on his title.

Chosen My Religion

Inside the Pope's private chamber.

By Michael Kirwan