Said PDK, “We are living in a computer-programmed reality. And the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed, and some alteration in our reality occurs.”

YouTube – Did Philip K. Dick disclose the real ‘Matrix’ in 1977?.

Image: Via Loren Coleman's Cryptomundo

Loren Coleman calls a new book by Strange Maine blogger and esotericist, Michelle Souilere, “a great and significant addition to the growing regional literature on the unknown…”

Coleman also notes that a 1-2 month estimated wait at Amazon.com, for the book, is likely incorrect.

Don’t despair, writes Coleman:

“…you can stop by the Green Hand Bookshop in Portland, Maine, and pick up a copy directly from the author, today. She’ll even autograph it. Or, if you are far away from Maine, you probably can order it from Amazon or your local bookstore, and have it next week, not next month!”

via Cryptomundo.

From Necromancer, this writeup of the fascinating interview:

“A trio of videos comprising an interview with Philip K. Dick in 1977 at a sci-fi convention in France on the contrasting perceptions of science fiction in the US and France…”

]]> http://heretic.blastmagazine.com/2010/04/23/philip-k-dick-in-77-france-beats-us-for-sci-fi-respect/feed/ 0 http://heretic.blastmagazine.com/2010/04/10/ayahuasca-gets-a-closer-look/ http://heretic.blastmagazine.com/2010/04/10/ayahuasca-gets-a-closer-look/#comments Sat, 10 Apr 2010 19:20:32 +0000 Mark Baard http://heretic.blastmagazine.com/?p=4573 Continue reading →]]> Emmanuel College senior and psychology major MacKenzie Peltier finds that a new book, by anthropologist Marlene Dobkin de Rios, is missing a key ingredient:

“The entire text discusses her findings of the curative nature of these spiritual drugs, but she has never once taken them.”

Peltier adds in her post that direct experience is as important to studying psychedelics as the primary research.

via The Tack.

Photo: Ryan McBride/Flickr CC

Premier cryptozoologist and Bigfoot hunter, Loren Coleman, is collaborating on a new book with another, not-so-crazy Mainer:

“Tentatively, Bigfoot in Maine by Loren Coleman and Michelle Souliere, is due for 2012, from Idyll Arbor, Inc.. The company’s publisher, Pine Winds Press has released Bigfoot in Georgia: Legends, Myths, and Sightings by Jeffrey Wells, the now-classic Bigfoot Casebook Updated by Janet and Colin Bords, Valley of the Skookum by Sali Sheppard-Wolford, and Robert W. Morgan’s two books. Pine Winds Press shall be trekking its way through other states in the near future, in search of writers of other Bigfoot books.”

via Cryptomundo » Coming Soon: Bigfoot In Maine.

Photo: CC/Emily

A new book promises to help women do their own IT thang:

When it comes to technology (or anything, really), men and women rarely think alike. Men are obsessed with acronyms and the size of their hard drives. Women just want to get things done. And if they can get it done while shopping for a cute pair of shoes, even better.

How to Be a Geek Goddess shows you how to sort out technology decisions (and find those cute shoes online) without ever having to ask a man. Whether you’re buying a computer, shopping for a cell phone, trapped in the electronics aisle, or simply lost on the Internet, author Christina Tynan-Wood explains it all with wit, intelligence, and a minimum of geeky acronyms.

via How to Be a Geek Goddess | O’Reilly Media

David Friedman, author of such books as The Machinery of Freedom and Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life, now looks at a variety of technological revolutions that might happen over the next few decades, their implications, and how to deal with them. Topics range from encryption and surveillance through biotechnology and nanotechnology to life extension, mind drugs, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. One theme of the book is that the future is radically uncertain. Technological changes already begun could lead to more or less privacy than we have ever known, freedom or slavery, effective immortality or the elimination of our species, and radical changes in life, marriage, law, medicine, work, and play. “If it can be done, it will be done,” David Friedman has said. “So the interesting thing to me is not what should you stop but how do you adapt.” We do not know which future will arrive, but it is unlikely to be much like the past. It is worth starting to think about it now.

via Cato Institute: Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World (Book Forum)

(Love your mother.)

from Mark:

Environmentalism is a secular religion that we can all get behind, physicist Freeman Dyson writes in the Times.

There is just one problem: The movement, Dyson argues, is run largely by non-scientists, and many of those believe that “global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet.” (See excerpt, below.)

Now any global warming skeptic is being labeled in popular culture as “an enemy of the environment.”

One transhumanist (or H+, short for human-plus) complains that many of his fellows have already bought into the global warming “dogma.” Follow the link, below, to see the comments to this blog post, at Sentient Developments:

Sentient Developments: Freeman Dyson on the ‘religion of environmentalism’ There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.

(In the Star Trek episode “Mirror, Mirror,” Kirk meets a wicked Spock in a parallel universe. He dissuades his first officer from eradicating an uncooperative humanoid race. Image: StarTrek.com)

from Mark:

Star Trek star William Shatner said last week that the earth is striking back against humans with natural disasters.

“They [people] are pressed together, defecating into the ocean,” said Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek. “The earth can’t take it.”

At one point in a long conversation with talk show host Glenn Beck, Shatner decried humankind’s penchant for reproduction. (See clip, and an excerpt from the transcript, below). It is a position he shares with his fellow transhumanist, Max More.

In a strange blurring of real and virtual reality, both Shatner and his Star Trek character are heroes to the transhumanists, who view the human body as limited, imperfect, and in need of artificial augmentation.

The transhumanists also want to bring about “a social order where responsible decisions can be implemented.”

Shatner, a vigorous 74-year-old (he also appears to have been “under the knife”), was on Beck’s show to flog his new autobiography, Up Till Now.

Note: I was a contributing editor to one issue of Glenn Beck’s magazine, Fusion. — mb

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA2xn35NpdA]

Glenn Beck – Interviews – Shatner v. Glenn
Well, nature, nature eventually will take care of that problem like they did, like nature does with animals. We’re overgrazing. So when deer multiply, when the natural order of things is disturbed and predators are taken away, for example, the deer, they overpopulate, they eat too much of the food and they starve. And we’re going to — if we don’t curb — how do we stop the overpopulation? I guess it’s by education and saying you’ve got to have less children, you can’t have all the children you want anymore. There’s a difference in the world now. Or nature will take care of it.

I’ve been trying to enjoy Second Life this week, as Markbaard Meredith. (That’s me visiting the Star Trek museum.)

Bt first: I am mystified that this is what passes for an embedded journalist in SL:

W. James Au
From April 2003 to February 2006, I was a contract writer for Linden Lab, creators of Second Life, primarily hired by the company to cover SL as an embedded journalist in an emerging society– its controversies, its personalities, its innovations and ambitions, along with larger themes of identity, social norms and organization, and cultural expression important to online worlds in general.

That contractual relationship has ended, but the story continues here.

That means Au was a paid marketing person for Linden Lab for almost three years. Yet he has kept his title seamlessly through his rebirth as a journalist.

Au continues to publish a positive overall message about the brave new world he helped to build.

Au (below) appears to have to have we-make-money-not-art charmed.

A blogger quotes Au: “SL is an international cutting edge creative space with high barriers to entry.”

In other words, the message is: Second Life is where the cool people hang out. Anyone who has explored SL knows this is preposterous, although there are excellent artists like John Craig Freeman working inworld.

But Au’s challenge, and invitation, should make more inworlders out of us.