flog

Who the fuck writes like this...?

Date: 5/7/96 4:31pm
Subject: Wanda? Yeah? Just checking.

Shorty was got, but not by me. Other than the (sh)witty banter and the "Post-Modern" mixing of realities ala "The Last Actio Heron". I didn't so much get the banter as enjoyed it. I confuse Shorty and Plump Fiction. Both Travolta hits. Kinda like that bomber of a movie or that movie about a bomber, _Broken_Arrow_. I reminisced the other day uber the Dulles days. Told of Toast-e-chees and "Ceci n'est pas une cours de recreation." Except I said that in English. Couldn't recall the French, as you'd already know if you'd logged into Cactus sooner than 10 days ago. Dem's was de good ole days. Better than the Columbia Days. I think Hayes was my only solace during that time. One of THE worst working situations possible. The incompetence is impossiblè to conceivè. To quote my 8th grade French teacher: "I don't know where the "bull" sound came from it's quite obviously "bluh." Im poe see bluh. She spoke Senegali French, though, which everyone who went on to the greater heights of Frenchness found it is equivalent to the West Virginian pronounciation of English. Hardly proper according to those who decide propriety.
Anyway, I was reminiscing. I remembered that there was a time when we couldn't eat lunch together. Little did I know that later in life I'd be able to somehow equate that with my college experience. I coulda been a contender. Did we ever resolve that peieon - overlord high taskmaster of the universe conflict? I don't recall. Dinner calls...unfortunately. Did you notice that those Cinnamon "Coffee cake" things they served at Chuck's for breakfast went down like lead? I've got two or three who've experienced besides me. I want to know the universality of it all. Anyway, as Dan would say: I'm going to go waste some money.
Steven

This guy. That missive must have been sent days before my college graduation. What a douche.

From: wsmith
To: gadds
Subject: define gargish
Date: Monday, June 03, 1996 5:53PM

No definition for 'gargish'. Maybe you mean:
1. garfish 2. garish 3. garnish

---
From: Beowulf Lewis Krise
To: gadds at GSI
Date: 6/3/96 7:33pm
Subject: Anu Garfish

Terry Gar-fish,
Gargish is some stupid meaningless word that the woots (another
stupid meaning-laden word) came up with. A woot is a person living [in]
Lawlor 12 who hales from the New England region of the country, and
thus speaks with an accent of sorts (Woot awh ya talkin' aboot? (The
origin of the word)), but is also known by other characteristics,
such as, being avid weight lifters, having pictures of half-naked men
on the walls of their rooms, going to Canada for the weekend (where
the legal drinking age is 19) without signing out and getting wasted
out or [sic] their minds, or spending several nights in a prison in
Cinncinnattiey. These lovable woots of ours made up this word
Gargish (it's one of the four words the [sic] regularly speak when they're
together) to refer to people that "hurt," that is who they find to
possess less than the requisite level of coolness.

So sorry that Anu Gargish couldn't help you out on that one.

Garish,
STeven

---

I just nearly passed into the next world from laughter.

From: "Gadd, Steve"
To: hickory
Subject: The Story of Votan, by S.K.
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 96 11:26:00 PST

Chapter 2A
In which Kath and Ed show Mr. Sloane their considerable hospitality

Ah, rather overdone, McChoakumchild. If he had only learnt a little less how infinitely better he would have taught much, much more!

This Heading is Centered in Courier Font

Paragraph One: It was a dark and stormy night. No. That won't do. Let me start again.
It was a bright and cheery night. No no no. Much too happy. Long ago in the dim ages, there lived a man named Votan. He worked well with his hands and made a respectable living building things from leaves.
He used leaves of all sorts -- pine, maple, oak, poison ivy. It was his livelihood. But alas, there had to be some sort of misfortune that would befall our good friend Votan, otherwise this would be one very boring story.
Lalala ... Votan made a fine living building things from leaves. Nothing spectacular or disastrous ever befell him and he liked who he was. The end.
That'd be a poor story to say the least. Where's the angst? The human interest? There has to be one of those four or six kinds of struggles all stories, novels, plays, or narrations fall into. But I digress.
Metanarration ruins the flow of a good story much like too much narration ruins a good action flick.
So, Votan was doing well, but lo, neighboring clans and distant enemies changed this peaceful existance and Votan ran like hell.

Votan's Story Page ?PN?

?Time... What is it? Votan wondered the same thing. Why you might ask?
Because I made him. I'm the master of this world I've created. I'm somewhat like God. Albeit, in a limited sense. OS/2 -- Operate at a higher level. I like OS/2. Quite a good little operating system

Good things about OS/2
1. It's made by IBM, not MS
2. It's true 32-bit technology
3. It's been around for ages
4. Version 4 has a cool nick name -- Merlin.

Good things about NT
1. It's true 32-bit technology
2. It has lots of apps
3. It's been around for ages.

Part Two, or This is where the story really starts

Sorry about those previous digressions. I'm new at this whole thing.
Anyway, Votan was living his happy little life making things from leaves, and then neighboring clans and distant enemies allied to make sure that he no longer had a good time doing things nor liked who he was. To do this they began taunting him. "Votan Wotan little poopy Potan," they would chant while Votan made things from leaves. This angered Votan so he went away and never came back.

THE END

More Drawings

I have to say that "So pretty." could not more miss the point of the song.

That's what I love about E6, they deliver a sticky nougat of deep, dark satire in a fluffy milk chocolate coating.

It took me a while to hop on the bandwagon, and my efforts to date could not properly be called great. I have a pair of car ramps that I have owned for close to a decade. The ramps are great - steel, rated to 5000 lb, except that they are too tall for either the Jetta or the Rabbit, so they have lain in my garage for years unused. During the great spring cleaning of 2008, they were moved out to the side of the garage where they have lain for the last 4 months or so.

Today I came home from work and vowed to get rid of the motherfuckers right now. I crafted a make-shift FREE sign out of a hastily torn off flap from a cardboard box and dragged the ramps out to the road in front of my house, positioned the sign and went about my business checking mail and dragging the recently emptied trashcans away from the street. I had not finished walking back into the garage to close the door when someone had pulled into my driveway to haul off my unwanted shit.

It lacks the style of leaving a barbell in front of a Sports Authority, but it has to be a some kind of record time to divestment.

After two-some-odd weeks of the Olympics cock-blocking Poker After Dark, I finally come home from the proverbial long day at work to find a PAD episode tucked in the innards of my TiVo - only to discover it is a goddamn fucking re-run.

I occasionally have conversations with myself (or my imaginary friends, whichever you prefer) and recently the topic of distinguishing fundamentalists from evangelicals came up. I answered myself thusly: "Fundamentalists wear long skirts and no make-up and tend to be socially conservation (i.e., unable to mind their own business), whereas evangelicals will wear shorter skirts and may be a bit socially progressive. Despite these superficial differences, however, they both think it is just and right that I should be tortured for my beliefs (or lack thereof). The fact that all but the most rabid of fundamentalists are willing to forestall this torture session until after my death does little to comfort me."

You're welcome, internet.

This one has been kicking around in the back of my head for a while as a consequence of a discussion with my friend G. He was confronted by a creationist who had asserted that there was no reliable mechanism for Darwinian evolution to "add information" to a genome. Before going into the specifics of this claim, it is important to keep two things in mind when arguing with creationists.

1. They are masters of bait and switch. At the start of the conversation X will be defined as one thing, but by the end, X will have been re-defined in a (sometimes) subtle way, lending credence to their faulty claim.
2. Creationists misunderstand and intentionally misuse science. The classic example is saying that evolution is impossible because it violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (along with embryonic development and the entirety of life according to their naive interpretation).
3. They lie (ok, I can't count), that is, creationists will continue repeating statements even after they personally have been shown how their claim is false.

G was frustrated because he took the creationist's lie at face value and was ill-prepared to counter it (not that countering it would have probably done any good (see #3)). At the time, I was too drunk and tired to offer any useful information beyond stating that the claim is "patently untrue". Here is my backup:

"Claim CB102: Mutations are random noise; they do not add information. Evolution cannot cause an increase in information.

Source: AIG, n.d. Creation Education Center. http://www.answersingenesis.org/cec/docs/CvE_report.asp

Response:

1. It is hard to understand how anyone could make this claim, since anything mutations can do, mutations can undo. Some mutations add information to a genome; some subtract it. Creationists get by with this claim only by leaving the term "information" undefined, impossibly vague, or constantly shifting. By any reasonable definition, increases in information have been observed to evolve. We have observed the evolution of

* increased genetic variety in a population (Lenski 1995; Lenski et al. 1991)
* increased genetic material (Alves et al. 2001; Brown et al. 1998; Hughes and Friedman 2003; Lynch and Conery 2000; Ohta 2003)
* novel genetic material (Knox et al. 1996; Park et al. 1996)
* novel genetically-regulated abilities (Prijambada et al. 1995)

If these do not qualify as information, then nothing about information is relevant to evolution in the first place.

2. A mechanism that is likely to be particularly common for adding information is gene duplication, in which a long stretch of DNA is copied, followed by point mutations that change one or both of the copies. Genetic sequencing has revealed several instances in which this is likely the origin of some proteins. For example:
* Two enzymes in the histidine biosynthesis pathway that are barrel-shaped, structural and sequence evidence suggests, were formed via gene duplication and fusion of two half-barrel ancestors (Lang et al. 2000).
* RNASE1, a gene for a pancreatic enzyme, was duplicated, and in langur monkeys one of the copies mutated into RNASE1B, which works better in the more acidic small intestine of the langur. (Zhang et al. 2002)
* Yeast was put in a medium with very little sugar. After 450 generations, hexose transport genes had duplicated several times, and some of the duplicated versions had mutated further. (Brown et al. 1998)
The biological literature is full of additional examples. A PubMed search (at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi) on "gene duplication" gives more than 3000 references.

3. According to Shannon-Weaver information theory, random noise maximizes information. This is not just playing word games. The random variation that mutations add to populations is the variation on which selection acts. Mutation alone will not cause adaptive evolution, but by eliminating nonadaptive variation, natural selection communicates information about the environment to the organism so that the organism becomes better adapted to it. Natural selection is the process by which information about the environment is transferred to an organism's genome and thus to the organism (Adami et al. 2000).

4. The process of mutation and selection is observed to increase information and complexity in simulations (Adami et al. 2000; Schneider 2000)."

» Read More

From here:
"Teeth might have been a barren intellectual exercise. It was envisioned as a prism through which to explore the baffling continued existence of myth in a post-modern, post-Jungian world, and specifically the reemergence of the vagina dentata myth (now posing as metaphor) in a post-Camille Paglia Sexual Persona world.

The film receives its bonafides as cultural commentary by the writer/director Mitchell (son of Pop artist Roy) Lichtenstein’s close reading of Paglia’s interpretation of the phenomenon. Lichtenstein first heard of the myth while an undergraduate at Bennington. When Dawn, his heroine, goes online to research whatever is “going on down there,” she exposes us all to Paglia’s take on the violence inherent to penetrative sex."

Not to worry, dear reader, this post contains the requisite quota for poop and atheism (with a little sex and lightning thrown in for good measure). Read the with great joyful and skepticism.

• The Pooping Intern - apparently NBC locks their bathrooms and the intern had no key; [original story]


• Art Object Prank - some merry pranksters are putting "art object" price tags on objects all over downtown Appleton, WI


• Evidence of adultery - a scorned wife is selling "the tart's knickers" on ebay.


• Shroud of Turin Update - radiocarbon results dating the shroud to the Middle Ages are still not conclusive enough evidence for some.


• 747 Struck by lightning - apparently the YouTube video was originally recorded to test whether planes instigate lightning or fly through lightning "mid-stream". [slow motion film of a lightning strike or the same video on YouTube

I love used book stores. I went to the local Wonder Books and got two books for less than $6.00. I then ran over to the Record and Tape Traders and bought a nused copy (the CD case was cracked) of Local H's latest album for just over $10.00. I wanted to get another Local H CD but couldn't justify spending nearly $20.00 on 2 used CDs.

There's a parable in there somewhere about how out of touch the music industry is, but I'd end up shaping it into a heavy-handed, pendantic rant if I were to flesh it out.

"Atheists believe god doesn't exist"

Actually, no they don't. Atheists don't believe that a god does exist, just like most reasonable adults (theist or otherwise) don't believe leprechauns or unicorns exist. Atheism really is very non-controversial, is the default setting of the human mind before it is enculturated, and is plausibly supported by the entire catalogue of reliable human knowledge that has been accumulated over the 4 million years of our evolution.

Theists are the ones out on a limb epistemically. They each need to justify why their own particular imaginary friend is different from every other imaginary being humans have ever made up. Of course, just like the tool in the video, this is their best effort:

Electricsix.com Has 5 Hot Tips To Make It Happen

"The economy is tanking. The price of oil is skyrocketing. Unemployment is on the rise. What are you going to do? One route is to blame President Bush and congress, blame Countrywide Financial and Enron, blame China. Another idea is to get a third job.

Or maybe, just maybe, you want to deal with it by retiring while you are still young and laugh at everyone else from the deck of your brand new yacht while you guzzle champagne and fuck expensive prostitutes!!!! Sound far-fetched?? Not as much as you'd think! Chase away your fears and worries. A lavish retirement may be headed your way sooner than you think if you follow these five simple tips brought to you by electricsix.com

1) By low, sell high

Real estate is a tried and true method of procuring quick wealth. No doubt you've heard talk of a mortgage crisis and the housing bubble bursting. Our advice? Ignore all that. Buy a house for not a lot of money, put a new coat of paint on it and then sell it for twice what you paid for it. You've just doubled your money!!!! That was easy!

2)Diversify, diversify, diversify

The market has been volatile of late, but don't worry about any of that. Many young investors make the mistake of putting their money in stocks that aren't oil companies. We recommend strongly that you put your money in stocks that ARE oil companies. And when it comes to oil companies, the more the merrier. Diversify your oil portfolio. Don't just buy stock in ExxonMobil when you can also buy stock in ConocoPhillips, British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell and the House of Saud. A diverse oil portfolio makes sure that you make more money while the money makes more money.

3) Find that Canadian 5-dollar bill you saved because you thought it was funny that it had hockey players on it

Remember that Canadian 5-dollar bill you kept because you thought it was funny that they put hockey players on their money? At today's exchange rate, that Canadian 5-dollar bill is worth 67,000 US dollars. Find that thing.

4) Steal David Beckham's identity

If you have a free afternoon, go to Los Angeles and rummage through David Beckham's garbage until you find a few of his credit card statements and computer passwords. Then get a hold of an encryption scrambler and an electromagnetic pulse that momentarily shuts down the power grid. Granted, these items are not cheap, but if looked upon as an investment, the return will be massive. Go back home after the EMP blast and enter the keycodes and Fibonnaci sequences into the internet and within minutes you can make David Beckham's money start working for you.

5) Just say "No!"

This might be the simplest tip of all, and also the most important. People in your life want money and payments from you all the time. By saying "no", your will notice your bank account begin to say "yes". You want me to get the next round of drinks?? No...how about YOU get it! You want me to pay for that gas I just pumped into my car? No...how about you stick it all the way up with a red hot ass poker!!!! You want me to pay my credit card statement??? No....let's not and say we did!!! By saying no to every potential payment life throws at you, your money supply never gets depleted. At times, others will react poorly to your financial strategy but the important thing is to ask yourself what is most important. Do you remain focused on the goal or do you let whining ninnies and greedy money-grubbing twits distract you from the endgame? Like anything in life, you have a choice. We believe if you choose to say no and hold the line every time, your golden years will be upon you sooner than you think.

Call the harbormaster....tell him he's gonna have to make room for one more yacht!!!!"

From E6's myspace profile:

"Show business is often referred to as “the last frontier of Communism”. Think about it. Performers are beholden to the common interests of a faceless collective who demand more for less. In the advent of technology, the ability of the artist to make massive profits has been destroyed. Artists, performers, midgets, musicians, jugglers, magicians, deejays – everybody – all of us – we’re all fucked now.

The result? I’m not going to bring out your hamburger and fries in a timely manner. I’m going to take cigarette breaks every 5 minutes. You’ve made me wait in a bread line, and I’m going to rest my aching dogs while your white ass salivates over that burger just sitting there, taunting you under the heat lamp. And I’m not going to bring it over to you until I’m good and ready.

That was the Soviet Union then and this is Hollywood now.

But even in the belly of despair, there is always hope. We know of a small town, north of Star City, in the woody fields of evil Mother Russia. The town, Gorchakovagrad, officially never existed. But we know it was there and we know how they danced. They danced around a fire created not by accidental nuclear disaster, but a fire fueled by their own desire – a desire to once again be entertained. And to sell the entertainment at a high price so that they and their families might once again live as higher beings with swimming pools shaped like Mickey Mouse.

Gorchakovagrad made Ibiza look like Houston, made Vegas look like Newark. Men dressed as neon gods. Women dressed as lizards. Dancing was cutthroat, dangerous. Music was loud, sensual, sexual, brave, sexual and sexy. The deejays were Italian. Money changed hands. Fashion conquered all. The girls, though reptilian, were hot. They were sexy capitalist pigs that knew their way around a deck of turntables…..and they liked to fuck.

There were no iPods, no computers, no websites. No file sharing. No intentional neutering of America’s teens. There was only 100% pure entertainment created by humans….for humans. And love.

This happened in the Soviet Union. And this will happen again on Oct. 21 when Electric Six releases its fifth record entitled Flashy.

Opening with the shameless and cowardly, but highly entertaining and delicious Gay Bar, Pt. 2, Electric Six is coming at you with all full force, hearkening back immediately to a very profitable time in its career, hoping that somehow an association will be made wherein the listener might accidentally buy more copies of this record than he normally would have because he thinks he’s getting Gay Bar, Pt. 1.

From there the album moves into a back to back to back-to-back selection of radio-ready pop nuggets, insisting that you hold us tight and never let us go. There are no themes on Flashy. Only hooks and aural delights. But we try to dress it up in glitter and neon along the way and that’s why we talked about the Soviet Union a little bit.

The new album is heavy at times as demonstrated by Formula 409 and Heavy Woman. The album is anthemic at times as demonstrated by Your Heat is Rising and We Were Witchy Witchy White Women. The album is smooth and sleek at times as demonstrated by Face Cuts and Watching Evil Empires Fall Apart. And the album is, above all, forward-thinking….as demonstrated by the triumphant Making Progress.

Most importantly, Flashy, the new album by Detroit’s Electric Six, is a beacon of liberty in an ocean of communism. If you love America, you will buy this record. You are either with us or you are with David Geffen.

Flashy by Electric Six will be released on Metropolis Records on Oct. 21 in North America. See the band on the Hittin’ The Walls and Workin’ The Middle tour is it chugs through the United States, Spain, the UK and Ireland this fall."

Because...
Mutiny on the bounty's what we're all about
I'm gonna board your ship and turn it on out
No
soft sucker with a parrot on his shoulder
'Cause I'm bad, gettin' bolder - cold getting colder
Terrorizing
suckers on the seven seas
And if you've got beef you'll get capped in the knees
We got sixteen men
on a dead man's chest
And I shot those suckers
and I'll shoot the rest

Most illingest b-boy
I got that feeling
'Cause I am most ill and I'm rhymin' and stealin'!

Snatching
gold chains vicking pieces of eight
I got your
money
and your
honey
and the fly name plate
We got wenches on the benches
and bitties with titties
Housing
all girlies
from city
to
city
One for all and all for one
Taking out M.C.'s with a big shotgun
All for one and one for all
Because the Beastie Boys have gone A.W.O.L.

Friggin' in the riggin'
and cuttin' your throat
Big biting suckers
getting thrown in the moat
We got maidens and wenches, man they're off the ace
Captain Bly is
gonna die
when we break his face

Most illingest b-boy
I got that feeling
I am most ill and I'm rhymin' and stealin'!
Ali Baba and the forty thieves...
Ali Baba and the forty thieves.
Ali Baba and the forty thieves.
Ali Baba and the forty thieves!
Ali Baba and the forty thieves!
Ali Baba and the forty thieves!!
Ali Baba and the forty thieves!!
Ali Babaaaa!!

Torching and crakin' and rhymin' and stealin'
Robbin' and raping - busting two in the ceiling
I'm wheeling', I'm dealin', I'm drinking, not thinking
Never cower,
never shower
and I'm always stinking
Yo ho ho and a pint of Brass Monkey
And when my girlie shakes her hips she sure gets funky
Skirt
chasing,
free
basing
killing every village
We drink and rob and rhyme and pillage

Most illingest b-boy
I got that feeling
I am most ill and I'm rhymin' and stealin'!

I was
drinking my rum - a Def son of a gun
I fought the law
and I cold won
Black Beard's weak
Moby Dick's on the tick
'Cause I pull out the jammy and squeeze off six
My
pistol is
loaded
I shot
Betty Crocker
Deliver Colonel Sanders down to Davey Jones' locker
Rhymin' and stealin' in a drunken state
And I'll be rockin' my rhymes all the way to Hell's gate

Most illingest b-boy
I got that feeling
And I am most ill and I'm rhymin' and stealin'!

Most illingest b-boy
I got that feeling
I am most ill and I'm rhymin' and stealin'!

Most illingest b-boy
I got that feeling
'Cause I am most ill and I'm rhymin' and stealin'!

Most illingest b-boy
I got that feeling
I am most ill and I'm rhymin' and stealin'!

Most chillingest b-boy
I am most ill and I'm rhymin' and stealin'!

Most killingest b-boy
I am most ill and I'm rhymin' and stealin'!

Most busting out b-boy

Most thinkingest b-boy

Most rhymingest b-boy

Most shootingest b-boy

Most rhymingest b-boy

Most jackingest b-boy

Most illingest illingest illingest b-boy

From /. :

">Ewoks were cool, and Lucas hadnt sold out then.

Ah, obviously you haven't heard the back story of Return of the Jedi. No, I don't mean the bit where it was called Revenge of the Jedi. There's more.

I'll cite nothing because I have no idea where this information leaked from, and you can take it with a grain of salt because I heard it years ago. But apparently the original story for Jedi worked like this:

The forest moon isn't Endor, it's Kashyyyk. The furry friends aren't Eworks, they're Wookies. You can still see an echo of this in the final film, because the very word "Ewok" is an anagram for "Wookie" (with a couple letters dropped). No one knows why this happened, but it's a safe bet the Wookies would have been way cooler than the Ewoks were. Popular opinion has it that the merchandising for cute teddy bears was more attractive than that of Wookie action figures, but no one knows for sure. Perhaps Lucas felt burned by the negative reaction to the Wookies in the 1978 Christmas Special.

Anyway, the idea was that Kashyyyk was a slave planet. That the Empire had enslaved the Wookies was a preexisting concept, and it explainined why Chewbacca so hated the idea of wearing handcuffs in A New Hope: he was a former slave, and Han had rescued him years ago. The story of Jedi was originally to have involved the Wookie uprising. Instead we got Ewok booby traps. Also, Vader doesn't take Luke to the new Death Star. Instead, he takes him to the capital planet of the Empire, and it's there that Luke encounters the Emperor. The setting wasn't named "Coruscant" back then (that's Timothy Zahn's name for it) but Ralph McQuarrie concept art from the 1980s still exists for it.

Later versions differed from the final story in key ways as well. For example, Michael Pennington's character Moff Jerrjerod (the dude who meets Vader in the docking bay at the start of Jedi) originally had a more expanded role. At the film's climax, he realizes that the Emperor is dead and that the Rebellion is about to destroy the new Death Star, so he decides to aim the primary weapon at Endor. The idea is to generate an explosion that will destroy the entire Rebellion in one swift stroke (not to mention the Death Star and much of the Imperial fleet, but he decides that's a small price under the circumstances). This adds significant tension and makes the Rebellion's last-minute destruction of the Death Star that much more urgent.

Of course, the last story element to drastically change was the loss of the Millennium Falcon. Originally Lando does not manage to escape with the Falcon (why did you think Han and Chewie weren't on it?), making Han's last moment with his favorite ship the scene in the docking bay where Lando promises to return it without a scratch. Remember how Han comments to Leia that he feels like he'll never see it again? Originally he didn't. Lando redeems himself for turning Han over to Vader by sacrificing himself to save the Rebellion. Han loses the Falcon, but in a way this is good for his character's development because it means he finally gives up his old ways and lands the princess.

Rumor has it that they filmed Lando's death but it bothered test audiences (who do they get for these idiot test audiences, anyway?) so Lucas and director Richard Marquand decided to change it.

While I like Jedi, I've always believed that something fundamental snapped between the glorious Empire Strikes Back and the final film. Lucas lost track of what was good about the universe and the characters, and it only got worse from there."

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that YouTube sucks for bowing to bogus copyright infringement claims. By the way, the IOC failed to block the content since you can still see it on Vimeo.

I don't give a god damn about Tibet or the Dali Lama, but censorship rubs my crank the wrong way.

A more interesting question (to me) than whether they are genuine is if there are any non-religious flat earthers? It's hard to tell from the forums whether any of the regulars are atheists.

From here:

"so i found a link to "Dangerous" - Bill's first album:

http://horribleexcursions.blogspot.com/2008/06/bill-hicks-dangerous.html

and, an iteresting little tidbit from Wiki - (now i know why i never liked Leary)

Allegations of plagiarism toward Denis Leary
Many comedians have acknowledged Hicks as an influence since his death. However, there have been some arguments made that certain comedians plagiarised Hicks' material and attempted to pass it off as their own, notably Denis Leary. To date IMDB still credits Hicks as an "uncredited" writer for Leary's "No Cure for Cancer" album.
Hicks himself had a chance to listen to Leary's album No Cure for Cancer during his trip to the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas during 1993 to report on the infamous siege. Upon hearing the album, Hicks was angered.
While he had laughed off similarities between the two comedians before, the albums' similar content (including jokes about smoking, Jim Fixx, and Judas Priest) and tone suggested plagiarism. In an interview, when he was asked why he had quit smoking, he answered, "I just wanted to see if Denis would, too." Hicks told an interviewer: "I have a scoop for you. I stole his act. I camouflaged it with punchlines, and to really throw people off, I did it before he did." Hicks was further incensed that Leary's album was released through A&M Records, giving the album assured publicity and sales.

At least three stand-up comedians have gone on the record stating they believe Leary stole not just some of Hicks' material but his persona and attitude. As a result of this, it is claimed that after Bill Hicks' death from pancreatic cancer, an industry joke began to circulate about Leary's transformation and subsequent success (roughly; "Question: Why is Denis Leary a star while Bill Hicks is unknown? Answer: Because there's no cure for cancer")."

I've mirrored Dangerous.

Assuming for the sake of argument that life developed from non-living, complex chemicals, we would expect there to be examples along a continuum from organic non-living molecules to unambiguously living cells with strange entities in between. The continued debate over whether viruses are alive says more to me about the human mind's hatred of fuzzy inter-categorical entities than it does about viruses. This shit is pretty cool, though.

"The article quotes a consultant on how hard it is to find COBOL programmers; he says you usually have to draw them out of retirement. Problem is, if there were any such folks on the employment rolls in California, Gov. Schwarzenegger fired them all last week, too."

"What we have learned about genes has allowed us to understand that we are not so much things merely existing in the world as beings in constant interaction with the world. If you took this idea to an extreme and imagined that you grew up on another planet, the essentially dynamic nature of animal building by genes and environment might mean you'd look very different. Cloned plants that have exactly the same genome can look like very different specimens if planted at different altitudes. In the same way, if you had grown up on a planet with lower gravity or one that was more distant from the sun and had a lower oxygen concentration, you might be incredibly tall, or short, or weedy, or blind...or maybe you'd have a supersized brain. If you took your African ape genome and cultured it on yet another planet, maybe the resulting you would have translucent skin. The point is that although we experience ourselves in some sense as finished or perfected, we are not in any way intended. There is no blueprint for what humans are meant to be. And as this moment is merely one moment in the past and future history of our evolutionary lineage, your life right now is merely an instant in the past and future history of the interaction between your genome and your environment."

-- Christine Kenneally, The First Word - The Search for the Origins of Language, p 197