Year: 2003
A Message in a bottle for Dow
Support the Greenpeace campaign for the Bhopal disaster survivors... It's 19 years since the world's worst industrial disaster in Bhopal, India. Deadly gas leaked from the poorly maintained and understaffed plant owned by Union Carbide, killing up to 20,000 people and leaving 120,000 chronically ill. For 19 years the companies responsible have done almost nothing to help. Now you can do a little something to help the survivors of the ongoing disaster and send a message to Union Carbide's new owner Dow Chemical that it should be cleaning up its toxic mess. Greenpeace article >> A Gift to Bhopal: Official site >>
Nuclear Families: Sellafield
A little bit of plutonium never hurt anyone, says British government... "Who'd have thought an atomic bomb could do so much damage?" - Father Ted At long-fucking-last... the British government has finally agreed that Sellafield - the plutonium reprocessing plant on the Cumbrian coast - may in fact be a health hazard. Melanie Johnson, the UK Public Health Minister, stated in the House of Commons that the results of tests on more than 3,000 extracted teeth by health authorities, showed that the level of plutonium increased the closer one lived to the plant. Eureka! But no... Ms. Johnson has also said that 'the average concentrations of plutonium were so low they are considered to present an insignificant radiological hazard'. Even more charming is a statement by BNFL (British Nuclear Fuels): 'What is not clear is whether the plutonium recorded in this study originated or from nuclear weapons testing fall-out.' (The...
TSOG: The Thing That Ate the Constitution
Only a year late reviewing the most recent book by Robert Anton Wilson... TSOG: The Thing That Ate the Constitution By Robert Anton Wilson Paperback: 224 pages Publisher: New Falcon Publications; (October 15, 2002) ISBN: 1561841692 Right, so I'm only a year late reviewing this. I should be ashamed... but at least I've gotten round to it. TSOG (TSarist Occupational Government) - The Thing That Ate the Constitution delivers what we've come to expect from Robert Anton Wilson (RAW)- incisive, biting satire, coupled with warm humanity and incisive humour. The recent candidate for the Governorship of California has jammed a small book full of provocative, amusing and insightful essays. I suspect... that most people do and say most of the things they do and say for exactly the same reason: they never stop to think about it. I know that sounds brutally cynical, but at least it explains the religious...
Get Your Tsar Card
'The Bearer of this card is a genuine and authorised Tsar' Download print quality card >> Context: >>
Bolick Naked
Definitely my favourite news story of the month... or even year? Definitely my favourite news story of the month... or even year? In Orem, Utah, a certain William Bolick (44), ordered his mother out of her home, while claiming he was Jesus Christ. Not very Messiah-like, you would think. She phoned the local coppers, who sent someone along... and found Bolick naked and violent. The policeman tried to pacify Bolick with a stun gun, but got badly bitten on the finger. He went to hospital, while Bolick went on the run, before being run to groud at a mobile home park. Charming. Or just a load of bolicks? More on Ananova > >
The Yoke: Into the blue, now the money’s gone
Nude Blues, Sex Magic, Hoaxing and lots more... and a word from Clare Taylor, of The Yoke - fifth issue out now! Periodical publishing, a notoriously difficult, low margin business, has become even more fraught recently. Advertising revenues are down, and a number of Irish titles have folded. The only one I will miss is The Slate (see page 2), and the odd article in Magill. Desperate times call for desperate measures. The naked blue woman you see on the front cover is me. I've wanted to imitate the Matisse blue nude series for quite some time now, a sort of postmodern pastiche - Life as Art. Art is not confined to galleries and museums; an art is a practical skill. The Yoke exists to provide a space for those who wish to practice their art. Nobody gets paid, so why do they do it? Perhaps because the need to...
The Yoke: Shrink to Fit
A conversation with Professor Ivor Browne - by Clare Taylor I first heard of Ivor Browne in connection with an experiment to test out the therapeutic qualities of ketamine. Then a few weeks later a friend bought me a book On Our Backs by Rosita Sweetman, and there was Ivor Browne again. His frank description of the soulessness of modern society caught my attention. At this time he was Professor of Psychiatry at UCD and Chief Psychiatrist of the Eastern Health Board. He is a radical, and for a radical to remain radical and still reach the very top of their profession implies exceptional talent. He doesn?t give interviews anymore, but I doggedly pursued him in order to have the following conversation. More >>
Charles Fort: Scientist or Humorist?
He coined the word 'teleport'... the X-Files is a direct descendent, and where would Fortean Times be without him? Originally published on disinfo.com One measures a circle beginning anywhere. - Charles Fort Charles Fort was a painstakingly erudite dissector of scientific texts and a ravenous predator of scientific dogma, who scrutinized how scientists formed their theories according to their own personal views, rather than the weight of evidence available. Fort gleefully trawled through the data that was suppressed, discarded or explained away in a less than satisfactory manner. He referred to this this data as 'damned'. It is probably safe to say there are more people familiar with the work of Fort's work than actually know anything about him, in spite of the stalwart campaigns of various Fortean societies, organizations and institutes, not to mention 'Fortean Times', the London based 'Journal of Strange Phenomena'. Every time some character from 'Star...
Flann O’Brien: Comic Genius
Blather.net wouldn't exist if it wasn't for St. Flann! Originally published on disinfo.com Evil is even, truth is an odd number, and death is a full stop - 'At Swim-Two-Birds' Brian O'Nolan (1911-1966), best known as either Flann O'Brien or Myles na gCopaleen, spent most of his life in Dublin, Ireland working as a top level civil servant. As civil servants were not allowed to write under their own names, O'Nolan introduced a vast array of pseudonyms - and so for over thirty years, Myles na gCopaleen wrote the 'Irish Times' column 'Cruiskeen Lawn', a satirical take on life in Ireland. No one was safe from the surrealistic wit of Myles. Today, it is Flann O'Brien that most people are familiar with, and the novels 'he' wrote. Authored in 1939, but unpublished until 1966 (posthumously), 'The Third Policeman' seems like some mad merger of 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Dante's Inferno'....
Raise the Lusitania!
The owner of the Lusitania wreck wants to launch an expedition to it... F Gregg Bemis, the American owner of the Cunard liner Lusitania liner which was sunk by a torpedo of the Irish coast in 1915, is attempting to overturn an Irish High Court order redusing him permission to carry out a huge research expedition on the wreck. Lusitania was sunk by a U-20 and sunk within 18mins with the lost of 1,195 lives. The vessel lies 100m down, 18.4km off the Old Head of Kinsale, in Cork, and is in pretty bad nick, having being depth-charged by the British Navy after WW1. Bemis was planning on spending $2 million on the expedition. <a href="http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1080235&issue_id=10063" target="new">More on this story in the Irish Independent >></a> <a href="http://www.lusitania.net/lastrestingplace.htm" target="new">Pictures of Bemis and the Lusitania >></a> <a href="http://www.lusitania.net/" target="new">The Lusitania Historical Society >></a> <a href="http://members.tripod.co.uk/irishwrecks/details/Lusitania608.htm" target="new">S.S. Lusitania on IrishWrecksOnline.net</a> <strong> Lusitania Mysteries:</strong>...