Hey pork-lovers: remember the pig brain mist story?  Well, mother nature’s delivered us a fresh little firmware upgrade, just like I promised!

ABC is reporting that the “National Security Principals Committee” held dozens of meetings in the White House specifically planning who and how to torture. The principals conspiring to commit these war crimes included the vice president, then-CIA director George Tenet, Attorney General John Ashcroft, National Security Advisor Condi Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. According to ABC, Ashcroft at one point asked, “why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.”

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“… We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government…”

[so old it's cool again.]

Years ago, I read Pinchbeck’s Breaking Open the Head, and found it to be a good and interesting book, even if somewhat inconclusive.

Somehow I missed Rolling Stone’s profile of him over a year ago. It’s a really interesting story - his influences and where they took him. I saw Pinchbeck on the Colbert Report a few months ago talking about his new book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl and I was quite confused.

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Y’all know how I feel about factory farming in general. Stuff like this really upsets me, and one of these days, Mother Nature is going to bite back. When she does, it’ll be pretty hard to feel sorry for those she bites. Those of you who eat meat should, at the very least, be sure it’s not commercially farmed and never saw the inside of a slaughterhouse. (In the words of Michael Pollan, “pay more, eat less.”) Video is here.

US Attorney General Michael Mukasey: “Torture, as you know, is now unlawful under American law. I can’t contemplate any situation in which this President would assert Article II authority to do something that the law forbids.”

Senator Arlen Specter: “Well, he did just that in violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; he did just that in disregarding the express mandate of the National Security Act to notify the intelligence committees.. didn’t he?”

Mukasey: “I think we are now in a situation where both of those issues have been brought within statutes and that’s the procedure going forward.”

Specter: “That’s not the point. The point is that he acted in violation of statutes, didn’t he?”

Mukasey: “I don’t know.”

[Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, 1/30/08]

“All Religions were invented by the Devil to conceal God from Mankind.”

I love this story. Seems that Garrett Lisi, a broke 39 year old surfer from Hawaii, has stunned scientists by presenting a viable, testable “theory of everything” that unites particles and forces within the universe.

While some are calling it a “long shot,” a few top scientists are pleasantly surprised and not so fast to write it off. Lisi’s theory takes gravity into account - something that, to date, has only been accomplished by string theory. String theory, as some of you know, requires ten or eleven dimensions to really work. Lisi’s theory has higher dimensions, too - but unlike string theory, it proves out just fine in our “ordinary” four-dimensional (3d+time) existence. I just like the E8 structures, which were discovered in 1888 but not fully computed/proven out until this year.

Whoa, dude, totally intense.

I’m very much looking forward to PopTech 2007, which kicks off later this week.  I’ll see some of you there - and those who won’t be there can catch the live webcasts, courtesy of Yahoo!

I’m also excited to meet and learn from Steven Pinker, who I’ve been grooving to recently via his new book, The Stuff Of Thought.  He and his partner Rebecca Goldstein are profiled in this cool piece at Salon: Proud Atheists.

Peggy Noonan with a smart piece about dialogue and its importance in political discourse. The UFlorida taser kid could have fit nicely within, too. Let them all speak if we are to find our way home again.

An interesting metaphor on the recent tasering of Andrew Meyer at UF.

Larisa Alexandrovna seems to have just awakened to the fact that the American population is sleepwalking. I think what happened is a big problem, but don’t see why it matters that he is black. It creeps me out only slightly more than Ike Skelton’s sneering attitude toward the protesters during yesterday’s briefing by Patraeus. It’s an outrage regardless of race, and I think good people should be outraged. But I think that a lot, and don’t hold out as much hope for organic outrage as I used to. Too much comfort around here the last generation or two. Sorry, Larisa, that you’ve just tuned in to how tuned out your fellow Americans are.

“My life doesn’t revolve nor has it ever revolved, around psychedelics. They enhanced my life — psychedelics can enhance the life of any intelligent, courageous person, and they might even represent our last great hope for planetary survival — but they didn’t replace my life or become its central focus. Second, it shouldn’t be implied that the acid elves sell talent by the pound — or the microgram. The psychedelic drug doesn’t exist that can make a creative genius out of a hack or turn a neurotic weenie into a happy fully-conscious human being. You have to bring something to the table, and be willing to risk your belief systems. Some people want to go to heaven without dying.”

I listened to this podcast a couple weeks ago and it got me even more worked up about impeachment. Constitutionalists are furious about the precedents being set by George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their co-conspirators. I’ve heard smart guys like Jonathan Turley, Jim Dempsey and David Cole expressing concern for a long time, but this segment especially moved me.

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Enjoy this great fractal gallery, thanks to my bro. Fractals are interesting and not just because they’re pretty. They reveal an underlying nature, fundamental truths about symmetry and nature. It’s one of those unique art forms that reveal deeper truths about the universe. If you think I’m crazy and are feeling really adventurous, read about Fibonacci numbers.

My friend Jimmy wrote a great piece for AllThingsD, “Do You Want to Do What You Did Before, or Do You Want to Do Something Interesting?“

Read this, then read this, then sleep tight!

The markets will continue to entertain this week as these “black boxes” and the mortgage mess begin to unwind.

Other things I’ve been reading about for various reasons (some obvious, some not): sacred geometry; dystopias; William James; multiverses.

To all of you who kindly tolerate my ramblings - I’m sorry I’ve given so much of this space to matters of policy and the Middle East lately, but I’m so pissed about it that I have a hard time not writing on the subject. Indulge me for another, then I will reward you with other fun topics.

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“The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is the crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children - many of whom are Muslims - trying to stop the advance of a system based upon liberty.”

That we live in a nation where these words can be spoken by our Commander In Chief - and not met with a deafening roar of outrage and a tsunami of calls for his impeachment - is as revealing as it is heartbreaking.

That is all.

Here’s some important viewing on this Fourth of July. Arguably Olbermann’s best “Special Comment” yet… an excerpt:
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